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V 















C!;e <6rototng pastor 


By JAMES G. K. McCLUEE 

AUTHOR OF “ LIVING FOR THE BEST,” “A MIGHTY MEANS OF 
USEFULNESS,” “POSSIBILITIES,” ETC. 



CHICAGO 

THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1904 









LIBRARY CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 


JAN 15 1904 


Copyright Entry 
3 1 - / <7 r,? 

CLASS XXc. No, 


^ / 0 LL 

' COPY S“ 



COPYRIGHT, 1903 
BY 

THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 


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THE APPROACH 


This book is written at the request of fellow- 
pastors. It is a pastor’s—not a se-rmonizer’s 
book. Many other suggestions might he 
expressed besides those it mentions, but its 
limited pages give space only for limited state¬ 
ments. Brief and unpretentious as it is, I 
earnestly hope it will have a mission in glorify¬ 
ing the pastorate to every man now in it and 
in glorifying it to many a brave heart as yet 
unconsecrated to it. Observation, alike in 
largest cities and in smallest villages, con¬ 
vinces me that the church’s power and man¬ 
kind’s blessedness rest supremely with pastors. 
My whole soul enters into this attempt to 
magnify and halo the inestimable importance 
of the wise, noble and consecrated pastor. 

James G. K. McClure 


Lake Forest, Illinois. 




CONTENTS 


The Preeminent Work of the Pastor 9 
The Pastor’s Physical Life ... 19 

The Pastor’s Intellectual Life . . 27 

The Pastor’s Spiritual Life ... 37 

The Helps to a Pastor’s Spiritual 

Life .53 

The Necessity of the Pastor’s 

Growth.63 

The Possibility of the Pastor’s 

Growth.75 

The Pastor’s Expectancy of Growth 87 

The Pastor’s Public Prayers ... 99 

The Advantages to a Pastor in a 

Continued Pastorate .... Ill 
The Blessings to Others in a Con¬ 
tinued Pastorate.123 





“Being desirous to please Him, for whom I am and 
live; and considering with myself that the way to please 
Him is to feed my flock diligently and faithfully, since 
our Saviour hath made that the argument of a pastor’s 
love, I have resolved to set down the form and character 
of a true pastor, that I may have a mark to aim at; 
which , also, I will set as high as I can, since he shoots 
higher that threatens the moon, than he that aims at a 
tree .”—George Herbert. 


8 


C |n (grototng pastor 


THE PREEMINENT WORK OF THE 
PASTOR 

T HERE never has been a time in the history 
of the Christian church when the pastor, 
and especially the growing pastor, was 
more in demand than to-day. A pastor, in the 
religious use of the word, is one who shepherds 
souls. His work is thus a distinctively spiritual 
work, dealing with the motives, ideals, purposes 
and conduct of those whom he tries to help. He 
himself is impelled to attempt this work through 
the inspiration he has received from the gospel. 
All the benefits Christ came into the world to 
confer he aims to make applicable to the hearts 
that are about him. He is a lover of the wel¬ 
fare of his fellows. He would be glad to bene¬ 
fit them in every phase of their living. He 
stands ready to counsel in household matters, 
in business perplexities, and in all temporal 
and material affairs. But his chief desire for 
men is to reach and bless the seat of all their 
joy and sorrow, the source of all their ambition 
and purpose—the soul. He believes that if he 
can make the fountain right, he will have done 
much to make the stream right. He therefore 
9 




XTbe Growing pastor 


argues that while others are physicians for the 
corporeal, are lawyers for the material, are 
teachers for the intellectual, and are leaders 
for the political, he is set apart for the spirit¬ 
ual. So set apart, he regards his field as of 
preeminent importance. The first and last 
element in every man’s character is the soul— 
the element that admits of likeness to the spirit 
of God. Because the care of the human soul 
is assigned him the pastor believes his mission 
greater than any other mission of beneficence 
entrusted to man. 

The manner in which the pastor does his 
work is the manner of a shepherd. Perhaps it 
ought to he added, is the manner of a “good” 
shepherd. Christ was eager to draw a clear 
distinction between the untrue and the true 
shepherd. The untrue shepherd was the one 
who watched over sheep for the benefit he 
himself secured by such watching. This was 
the hireling type, the type that really did not 
care for the sheep, hut cared only for wages 
and self-comforts. A pastor of this kind had 
no genuine love for the sheep, and when an 
hour of peril came he naturally protected his 
own selfish interests and left the interests of the 
flock to protect themselves as best they could. 

10 




pre* : eminent TKHorfc of tbe pastor 


It is no such mercenary, selfish type of pas¬ 
tor that is in mind in our idea of the Christian 
pastor. The Christian pastor finds in Christ 
his example. Christ loved men, knew men, 
sought men, fed men, led men, protected men, 
and was willing to die for men. Whatever a 
brave, devoted shepherd of sheep did for sheep 
Christ did for men. He found the wanderer 
and laid him on His shoulder beside His heart. 
He noticed the absence of the individual from 
safety and peace. He nursed the sick, He 
dealt gently with the weary, He led no faster 
than the tired could go, He bound up the 
broken, He made His voice familiar, He created 
confidence in His safe leadership, He carried 
the young in His bosom, He gave such food and 
drink as were nourishing and He stood stead¬ 
fast to His charge in their seasons of special 
need. Christ certainly was a “good” shep¬ 
herd, a beautiful lover, protector, and saviour 
of the souls of men. 

Whatever Christ thus was to those about 
Him, the Christian pastor attempts to be to 
the people about himself. The shepherd’s 
work is a very close work, involving personal 
contact. It is not- the sower’s work who, scat¬ 
tering seed broadcast, must leave the seed, for 
11 



Ubc (Browing Pastor 


he cannot hold himself near the ground to 
watch over every individual kernel and to keep 
his hand constantly on it. It is not the 
orator’s work who, being in Athens on a brief 
visit and having opportunity on Mars Hill to 
make an eloquent speech, improves the oppor¬ 
tunity and then must hasten away to speak 
somewhere else. The Christian sower’s work 
is great and important, and so is the Christian 
orator’s work great and important. All hail 
to them and all blessings on them! But the 
souls of men are so made by God that their 
needs can never be fully met until in addition 
to the sower and the orator there is the pastor, 
the man who knows these souls, loves them, 
speaks personally to them, guards them from 
their particular temptations, assists them in 
their peculiar trials, makes them realize that 
he is their unselfish, devoted friend and puts 
himself at their side when their sky lowers. 

It is true that this title “pastor” is largely 
applied to men who, ordained to the Christian 
ministry, are regularly placed in charge of a 
given congregation. In popular phraseology 
“a stated supply” is one temporarily watching 
over a community of souls. So an “evan¬ 
gelist” is one preaching for a few weeks or 
12 




pre-eminent Morfe of tbe pastor 


months in a town or city. But a pastor is 
“settled,” as we say, over a church; the idea 
being that he is there to stay and that the 
benefits of his work, as well as its character¬ 
istics, lie in his continued comradeship with 
the hearts of his people. 

In one sense it is scarcely fair to appropriate 
this title of pastor only to ministers in charge 
of congregations. Every Sunday-school teacher 
should be a pastor. The sphere of opportunity 
for such a teacher is exactly the sphere Christ 
Himself filled when He was a pastor. He 
really was more like such a teacher than like a 
minister standing up in the pulpit to preach. 
The Sunday-school teacher meets his oppor¬ 
tunity and accomplishes his work only as he 
shepherds souls seven days out of seven. The 
very fact that his flock is small makes possible 
an individual shepherding that is not so pos¬ 
sible when the flock numbers hundreds. It is 
the pastor-teacher who in the Sunday-school 
has the delight of seeing pupils grow into like¬ 
ness to Christ: it is only such a teacher who 
can possess the power whereby he “keeps” the 
souls entrusted to him, saving them from error 
and holding them firm in truth. 

There are week-day teachers also who are 
13 





XTbe (Browing pastor 


pastors. Benjamin Jowett of Balliol College, 
Oxford, watched over young men who came to 
his instruction rooms, guiding their thoughts, 
inspiring their purposes, regulating their ambi¬ 
tions, purifying their motives, until he was 
entitled to be called a “pastor-teacher. ” These 
pupils were his “care”; he bore them on his 
heart, he watched over their needs, he wrote 
them letters of interest in hours when he fan¬ 
cied they were burdened and he ever gave them 
a clear, ringing summons to noble, Christlike 
living. 

Let us say, then, that any one who shepherds 
souls is a pastor, and so gather under this 
splendid title all those workers, the world over, 
who in homes, in schools, in association houses, 
in reformatories, lovingly try to lead the lives 
of others into the green pastures and beside the 
still waters of God’s grace. What a useful 
body of people that title stands for! They are 
those who, taking the blessed truths of God, 
have so fed them to individual me a and women, 
to hoys and girls, that the human heart has been 
nourished in those truths. They have brought 
the Christ very close to people and have been 
the best friends of foolish, tempted, wandering, 
thorn-caught humanity the world has ever 
14 




preeminent Morft of tbe pastor 


known. It was Ambrose that, bearing long 
and dealing lovingly, patiently and wisely with 
Augustine, won him from the world to the 
Master. All through the generations of the 
Christian church it has been the pastor who 
has rescued the lost and refreshed the weary 
and guided the ignorant. 

The need of the pastor is to-day as great, if 
not greater, than ever. All over the large cities 
there are multitudes of men waiting for a 
trusted messenger of God to come alone to 
them, to sit down beside them, to talk over 
their interests, to impart an atmosphere of 
comradeship and gently bring to bear the 
Christian principles upon their daily lives. 
Men are hungering for winsome indications of 
personal affection. They hear the earnest 
words of the pulpit, but they distribute those 
words over the whole audience. They listen to 
appeals for their benevolence both on week day 
and on Sunday, until they are in danger of 
feeling that all a minister wishes from them is 
their gifts. The thing they are waiting for 
and the lack of which they feel so deeply, is 
the presence of a man of God at their indi¬ 
vidual side, who has come to be their friend, 
their comforter, their guide, their sympa- 
15 




Ube (Browing pastor 


thizer—a man who seeks not theirs, but them¬ 
selves, and seeks themselves for their own sake 
alone. 

I write these words with a burning heart. I 
am sure of my facts. All these bankers’ offices, 
all these clerks’ desks, all these mechanics’ 
factories, all these laborers’ tasks have hearts 
that are crying out for a true pastor’s interest, 
an interest that they may see and feel. The 
work of the pastorate never loomed so large 
and important as now. Literature, even relig¬ 
ious literature, is abundant. Men and women 
can obtain it and use it in any spare moment. 
The drive of business life and of social life is 
constant. Specialism divides off every kind of 
work until two kinds of work overlap less and 
less. But in all this literature, drive and 
specialism, one feature of to-day comes out 
with more and more prominence, that is, no 
one but a pastor is doing or will do the work of 
shepherding souls , and multitudes upon multi¬ 
tudes of men feel that they are as sheep without 
a shepherd ! 

'To do this work of the pastor, to go to these 
men and feed them, heal them, rebuke them, 
and lead them, is a taxing work. It taxes 
mind, heart and spirit alike. It calls for nerve 
16 




pre-eminent Worfe ot tbe pastor 


and it uses up nerves. It is a very patient, 
prolonged, particular work. It takes time and 
strength from other fields of effort. No won¬ 
der men shrink from it and weary in it. No 
wonder that they turn to other spheres of 
benevolent labor. No wonder that they mag¬ 
nify the place of preaching, the place of teach¬ 
ing, the place of printing, the place of 
administration, and so let their emphasis pass 
off from the pastorate. But still the fact re¬ 
mains that in this present age, if never before, 
the great, and I think the greatest need in the 
Christian world is the need of pastors who in 
Christ’s spirit—as with Nicodemus, as with 
Zaccheus, and as with the blind man cast out 
of the synagogue—shall seek the individual, 
shall keep seeking him, and shall lovingly apply 
to him the consolation and inspiration of the 
gospel. 

It is nor oratory, not literature, not educa¬ 
tion that our Christian world needs most to¬ 
day, but it is shepherding, the self-denying, 
wise, loving, particular comradeship of a 
trusted pastor, with the individual needs of 
the soul of man. 


17 




“ When God has laid particularly heavy burdens upon 
men, how often he has endowed them with a larqe degree 
of the saving grace of humor. It was so with Luther in 
his heavy task, and with Hugh Latimer in his. It was 
not so with the English Puritans of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury; the very salt of the earth, but they could not see a 
joke; and that was one reason why their splendid enter¬ 
prise ended so forlornly in the restoration of Charles II. 
But it was so with Abraham Lincoln; there was humor 
for you, for a balance-wheel, a pledge of sanity, a tie of 
sympathy. I am very much in earnest about this; if 
you should forget everything else, I say, please remember 
this. For myself, I do not know that any book outside 
the Bible has helped me so much, when I needed help 
most, as the Memoirs of the immortal Mr. Pickwick. 
Cervantes’ famous hero would come in for a close second, 
if I could read his story in the Spanish. And the dear 
old Autocrat of the Breakfast Table! We have it on the 
best authority that a merry heart doeth good like medi¬ 
cine. With all respect for our friends, the doctors, you 
might better leave your whole medicine chest at home 
than your good humor.” —W. R. Richards, D.D 


18 


XTbe pastor's physical OLtfe 


THE PASTOR’S PHYSICAL LIFE 

T HE spiritual life of any man is his main life. 
The spiritual life is that which inspires 
motives, gives color to emotions and 
directs purposes. It lies deeper than ethics or 
morality, it is their spring, their fountain head. 
The spiritual life decides the atmosphere of the 
soul. Let that atmosphere he pure and in¬ 
vigorating and the soul flourishes. But let 
that atmosphere be malarious and depressing, 
and the soul’s condition is sure to be unsound. 

While the truth is indisputable that to every 
man the welfare of his spiritual life is of the 
greatest importance, that truth takes on a 
startling impressiveness in the case of the pas¬ 
tor: his success as a pastor is absolutely de¬ 
pendent upon the vigor of his spirituality. 

This emphasis on the spiritual in no way 
decries the place and the importance of the 
physical in a pastor’s life. Health of body is 
often a requisite to health of soul. It is uni¬ 
versally acknowledged that a sound body for a 
sound mind represents an ideal condition. 
When Elijah’s physical forces were depleted he 
lost courage and patience, and became a spirit- 
19 




Qfte Growing ©astoc 


ual weakling. The man under the juniper tree 
who had no heart for the interests of God’s 
kingdom was physically exhausted; he was 
sleepless and foodless. Refreshing rest and 
palatable food were essential to his spiritual 
energy. 

In this respect Elijah does not stand alone. 
Phillips Brooks, with his great body and mar¬ 
velous vitality, seemed the very expression of 
the bravery he taught. He made difficulties 
and discouragements appear inconsequential, 
and many a man smiled at his own ministerial 
perplexities, because he caught the tonic of 
Phillips Brooks’ vigor. But when Phillips 
Brooks became a bishop and the frets of his 
engagements wore upon his physical energy, he 
too found that depression would seize him—un¬ 
less he fought it off by a powerful exertion of 
his will. Spurgeon, with all his robustness of 
soul, a robustness that made him seem like a 
great spiritual giant, saw life through clouded 
glasses when the physical forces were low. 

There have been men who carried themselves 
triumphant over all physical ailment. Pascal 
and Baxter, subject to continued physical weak¬ 
ness, seem to have had special grace from God 
for their sustained gladness of soul. So too 
20 




Ube pastor's physical Xlfe 


did Dr. James B. Shaw, of Rochester, N. Y., 
who on the fiftieth anniversary of his ministry 
in that city said: “One secret of my long pas¬ 
torate and long life is my conscious weakness. 
This drives me to the Lord. I go to him with 
everything. When you consider that I am a 
hereditary dyspeptic, that I am extremely diffi¬ 
dent, that I am a light sleeper, sometimes de¬ 
prived of sleep for nights and days together, 
that I have always carried a heavy load, you 
cannot fail to see that I have had strength 
from God.” Robert Hall and Adolph Monod 
were rare instances of the triumph of the soul 
over physical ailments. 

But the ordinary man is like Joseph Parker, 
who before preaching took a bath that he might 
be “resilient” as he entered upon his services. 
Most men, all men with rare exceptions, are far 
more helpful, see duties in a brighter light, are 
better able to give cheer and to make the gos¬ 
pel winsome, when their physical condition is 
vigorous. Sydney Smith declared, “I delight 
to stand in the free air of heaven, my feet on 
God’s green turf, and thank my Creator for 
the simple luxury of physical condition.” 

The growing pastor will look out for his phys¬ 
ical welfare. He is justified in desiring to live 
21 





Ube 6row!na Pastor 


as many years as he can, that he may have 
more and more opportunity for growth and so 
for usefulness. He makes grievous mistake if 
he eats or drinks what hurts him. He also 
makes mistake if he needlessly and unguard¬ 
edly puts his health in peril. It is a great 
privilege for a pastor to continue living, and 
living, to grow. Many a man who seemed dull 
and incapable when he began his ministry has 
kept plodding on for many years, and those 
years have given opportunity to develop. Had 
he died at the outset of his ministry he would 
have accomplished very little, for he was no 
Robert M. McCheyne nor F. W. Robertson in 
personality or pulpit force. A growing pastor 
thanks God for each new year of his life 
because that new year, if he has physical 
strength, enables him to advance his Master’s 
cause. It is right then to consider the things 
that help or interfere with bodily health. 
Proper hours must be taken for rest. Wearied 
energies must have time for their refreshment. 
Each pastor must learn for himself the best 
methods whereby he can conserve his powers; no 
other pastor, however successful his own method 
may be to himself, can tell what method a 
second pastor may use to his advantage. 

22 




Zh e pastor's physical Xtfc 


The growing pastor will learn how he can best 
study, best work, best visit, and best rest. 
The golf links may do for one, while a sofa 
does better for another; music may be a 
panacea for one, while a brisk walk is the 
panacea for another; solitude may bind up one 
man’s health, while another is never so re¬ 
freshed as after pastoral calls. Let each man 
find for himself his elysian field, ever remem¬ 
bering that when work is hardest, duties most 
numerous and demands most incessant, he may 
be sure that “protected exposure is no peril.” 
It is true, too, that in every pastor’s life there 
come days when God never designed that he 
should stop one instant to consider whether he 
will grow or not, but simply consider whether 
he will meet an immediate need or not. Then 
nothing confronts the pastor but the direct 
doing of a present deed. 

It is not wrong, however, for a pastor to wish 
that he may live a good three score years and 
ten, and always be growing into more power 
for his blessed Lord. He is justified in desir¬ 
ing the happiness of having long, long years 
of robust health in which to bring larger and 
still larger glory to the Master’s cause! 

Let then this incident be told as indicating 
23 




Zbc (Browina pastor 


how one pastor was helped in the preservation 
of his health. His brother came to him at the 
outset of his ministry and said: “You are 
going into the ministry. Let me suggest one 
thing to you. Never speak about being Hired.’ 
You know how the ministers in our city come 
into my store every few days. When Dr. 

H-comes, and I say, ‘How are you to-day, 

Doctor?’ he replies, ‘I have been very much 
occupied lately with special addresses and 
unusual work, and I am really feeling very 

tired.’ When Doctor B-comes, and I 

say, ‘And how are you to-day, Doctor?’ he 
replies, ‘I have attended four funerals this 
week already and many of my people are sick, 
and I am trying to call upon them, and the 
consequence is I am tired, very tired.’ Don’t 
you,” said the brother, “as a minister say any¬ 
thing about being ‘tired.’ Other people are 
tired as well as ministers. Keep tiredness to 
yourself.” 

That suggestion, heeded by the young pastor, 
has been, in his judgment, of inestimable bene¬ 
fit to him. The effect of it has been that he 
has never intentionally protruded his bodily ills 
upon the attention of others, he has studiously 
kept silent concerning his weariness and con- 
24 






TTbe ©astor’s ©basical Xtfe 


cerning any mental distress that might be his, 
and has endeavored to put into the hearing of 
others and into his own hearing only words 
charged with ozone and vigor. Such words 
have had the effect of inspiriting his heart and 
imparting tonic to his life. 

“There are few men in the ministry who 
know how to make their machines work at a 
high rate of speed, with great executive energy, 
without damage to themselves. It is an art to 
be healthy at all, but to be healthy when you 
are run at the top of your speed all the time is 
a great art indeed.” 


25 




“No book is worth anything which is not worth much, 
nor is it serviceable until it has been read and re-read, 
and loved, and loved again; and marked so that you can 
refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can 
seize the weapons he needs in an armory, or a house¬ 
wife bring the spice she needs from her store.” —Ruskin. 


26 


Ube pastor's intellectual Xlfe 


THE PASTOR’S INTELLECTUAL LIFE 

E VEN though the superlative value of the 
spiritual in the pastor’s life is unceas¬ 
ingly proclaimed, still it is clear as 
sunlight that the importance of the intel¬ 
lectual in his life likewise shoud be unceas¬ 
ingly proclaimed. 

The usefulness of a pastor depends largely 
on his mental ability. If he can bring forth 
treasures new and old from God’s Word, state 
them in their beauty, illustrate them until they 
become plain as pictures, and make them 
answer the inquiries of men’s souls, he accom¬ 
plishes his mission, he becomes a faithful 
herald of the gospel. But if he fail in any of 
these particulars, his ministry is impotent. 
Going amongst men, he must know enough 
about the subjects he represents to make his 
fellows respect him; standing in the pulpit, he 
must speak sentences that command the con¬ 
sciences of his hearers. The apostles may have 
been “unlearned men” in the sense that they 
were not graduates of any advanced school of 
liberal education, but they knew how to handle 
the great truths of human life in such a way 
27 




Zhc (3rowino pastor 


that no thoughtful man could afford to despise 
their words; they could state propositions so 
plainly that those propositions carried convic¬ 
tion. No one can do more. 

There never has been an era in the history of 
God’s people when the pastor was not asked to 
be intellectual. To-day, it would seem, more 
than ever in the past, the pastor who shall 
meet all the questionings of human hearts con¬ 
cerning the origin of life, the nature of inspi¬ 
ration and the formation of the canon as well as 
the questionings concerning Theism, the Deity 
of Christ and the thousand and one problems 
of social and individual duty, needs to be 
mentally alert, capable and energetic. The 
pulpit of the pastor is meant to be a throne 
whence the words spoken shall be as unques¬ 
tionable as truth. To have that pulpit such a 
throne demands the keenest, strongest intel¬ 
lectual life that the pastor can nourish. 

Three lines of development should then 
demand the attention of the growing pastor. 
One is the line of mental discipline. He 
should aim to have his intellectual powers more 
and more alert, seeing truth the quicker, under¬ 
standing its application the sooner and judg¬ 
ing men and matters with the larger accuracy. 

28 




Ube ©aster's intellectual Xtfe 


It becomes almost a surprise to the pastor who 
for years has studiously applied himself to ex- 
egetical study, homiletic statement and pas¬ 
toral visitation to see how Scripture opens to 
his “sesame” and reveals its treasures almost 
upon the instant of his approach. What he 
could not do at first at all, or if at all, with the 
greatest difficulty, because he did not know 
how to handle his tools and did not understand 
his material, he now does with the alacrity and 
joy of skill. If anything in the world is sad, 
it is a pastor who bungles with his tools and 
misunderstands his material after thirty years 
of service in the ministry. Perception, grasp, 
judgment, aptness, should have become his long 
since. 

Intellectual resources likewise should be 
sought by the growing pastor. Here it is well 
to draw a clear distinction between mere read¬ 
ing and assimilating thinking. “The world of 
mankind,” it has been said, “maybe divided 
into two classes, those who read and those who 
think.” In a certain sense Bacon was right 
when he asserted that “reading makes a full 
man. ” But there is another sense in which he 
was wrong in this assertion. It is not what a 
man eats, but what he assimilates that nour- 
29 




TLhc (Browing pastor 


ishes him. Many readers are no stronger after 
reading than before. Jonathan Edwards read 
with pencil in hand, not to make record of 
other men’s sentiments, but of the sentiments 
aroused by the reading in his own mind. One 
of the beautiful possibilities of a pastor’s life is 
that he can take a thought, go out calling with 
it, turn it over and over in his mind, apply it 
here and apply it there, let it ramify in all the 
directions which the needs about him suggest, 
and then come home with a heart crowded with 
new ideas. No, it is not the amount of read¬ 
ing that a man does that gives him intellectual 
resources, but the amount of pondering he 
does on worthy ideas; ideas that, brooded over, 
hatch out; ideas that grow in grandeur, beauty 
and power the longer they are considered. 

Then, too, the growing pastor seeks develop¬ 
ment in ability to do his work. More and 
more work comes to any man who continues in 
the pastorate, and the question is how is he to 
do it. If his experience grows, if his methods 
of labor clarify, if his resources accumulate, 
then he may hope to be up with his work and 
not to be outrun by it. Here is where the 
value of accuracy, of punctuality, of full-meas¬ 
ured fidelity, practiced in the earlier ministry, 
30 




Ube pastor's Ifntellectual Xtfe 


serve so helpful a mission in the later ministry. 
The pastor acquires habits of full stint, of 
hearty industry and of prolonged continuance 
that give him momentum, a momentum that 
carries him straight into the future with con¬ 
stantly accumulating force. 

There should then be an earnest craving in 
every pastor’s heart for intellectual growth. 
“0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and the knowledge of God,” the Apostle cries. 
To this cry the pastor responds, “Yes, and ‘0 
the wondrous opportunity granted a pastor not 
alone to search into those riches, but also to 
apply them to the needy souls of humanity!’ ” 

It is, however a mistaken view to think that 
intellectual development, apart from the power 
of common sense, necessarily adds effectiveness 
to a pastor’s work. The mother of Daniel 
Gabriel Rosetti is quoted by her son William as 
saying: “I always had a passion for intellect, 
and my wish was that my husband should be 
distinguished for intellect, and my children 
too. I have had my wish and I now wish that 
there were a little less intellect in the family so 
as to allow for a little more common sense.” 
Common sense affords as wide a field for study 
and application as any one of the sciences. 

31 




XTbe (Browing pastor 


Happy the man originally gifted with common 
sense! Happy also the man who not possess¬ 
ing it has wit enough to search for it as for 
pure gold! 

It will be a sorry day for the church of Christ 
and a sorry day for the individual pastor when 
he slights the cultivation of intellectual power. 
He may fancy that inasmuch as Ahithophel, 
whose wisdom was as the oracle of God, turned 
traitor, and inasmuch as Solomon, whose men¬ 
tal resources were unparalleled, gave himself to 
vanity, there is no necessary connection be¬ 
tween intellectual power and the service of the 
truth. No, there is no necessary connection, 
no connection made necessary by the very 
nature of the case. But when such power is 
consecrated to God, there cannot be too much 
of it for the welfare of the church. The more 
a pastor becomes like a learned Moses or like a 
learned Paul, the more useful he can be to 
God’s cause. There is indeed a kind of wis¬ 
dom that is foolishness with God, and there is 
a science falsely so called. But there is also a 
kind of wisdom on which God lays largest 
benedictions—the wisdom that He use 3 in 
every great onward movement of His children. 
He never makes a commanding advance for His 
32 




Ube pastors Untellectual Xtfe 


people, excepting under the leadership of a 
strong mind, a mind strong for the particular 
work required at the time and place. Wickliffe, 
Huss and Luther; John Robinson of Leyden, 
Thomas Guthrie of Edinburg and Alexander 
Maclaren of Manchester; Finney, Moody and 
Drummond, all were men who, according to 
natural talent and as opportunity allowed, made 
the very best of their intellectual power. 

“When the procession of your powers goes 
up joyfully singing to worship in the temple,” 
said Phillips Brooks, “do not leave the noblest 
of them all behind to cook the dinner and to 
tend the house. Give your intelligence to 
God.” Yes, and let that intelligence be each 
pastor’s own particular intelligence. Much of 
the intellectual power of a pastor will come 
from his so incorporating truth that that truth 
becomes himself. He may not expect, he 
should not expect to see any feature of life 
exactly as another sees it, for no other sees that 
feature from his particular viewpoint and with 
the lights and shadows of his individual angle. 
It is a great day for a pastor when learning— 

“God fulfills Himself in many ways. 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world,” 
83 




XTbe Growing pastor 


he also learns that God fulfills Himself through 
the individual expression, the individual 
knowledge, the individual thought-power and 
the individual experience of every pastor. The 
“magazine-fed” preacher will never know the 
deep currents of human life. The pastor who 
merely echoes another’s thought will never 
develop forceful personality and so will always 
lack the power that comes from such forceful 
personality. In his reverence for the worthy 
past he is “to stand upon the old paths,” but 
in his reverence for his own individuality he is 
“to lookout for the new paths.” Emphasis 
will shift with him from time to time; to-day 
it will be upon the inexorable nature of the 
divine law and to-morrow upon the merciful 
tenderness of the divine love. Proportion in 
statement will likewise alter from time to time; 
to-day he will deal more largely with the duties 
of activity and to-morrow with the duties of 
meditation. 

But there will be one feature of his intellec¬ 
tual life that will know no shadow of wavering; 
his enlarged and ever-enlarging conception of 
the majesty, worthiness and adorableness of 
God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. It may be said, and said without fear 
34 




Zhc pastor’s Untellectual OLtfe 


of challenge, that the consecrated intellect of a 
pastor will find no stimulus to intellectual 
growth so effective as the study of the charac¬ 
ter and wishes of God. When a pastor’s intel¬ 
lectual resources are not helped by the reading 
of Milton, Bunyan and Shakespeare, when they 
are not helped through the biographies of 
Calvin and Dean Stanley, when reviews, essays 
and commentaries wholly fail to arouse him, 
then let the pastor study God —God in nature, 
God in Moses, God in David, God in Isaiah, 
God in Christ—and try to grasp Him in all 
His beauty, wondrousness and power—try to 
express Him to his own heart and to the hearts 
of others, express Him in all His fullness, glory 
and attractiveness—and as sure as daylight is 
to follow night, it will follow that the pastor 
will grow in intellectual power. 


85 




“Whatever he speaks of divine things he must speak 
in the language of humanity. Nay, more, he must speak 
the language of the humanity of his own day. But he 
must not be the mere echo of the thoughts of men—a voice 
answering back to the voice of their weakness or their 
despair. He must be more than the mirror to human 
nature. Of him we may say, as Schiller said of the 
poet: ‘He is the son of his time, but pity for him if he 
is its pupil or its favorite. Let some beneficent deity 
snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his 
mother and nurse him with the milk of a better time.’ 
The preacher must be nursed upon the breast of Heaven. 
He must draw his inspiration from the world which is 
the world not of shadows but of realities. He must be 
the voice, even if it be in an irresponsive wilderness, 
preparing the way of the Lord. He must be the herald 
of that which never dies in a world wherein all things 
seem to die. He must restore the poetry of hope to man¬ 
kind .”—Hugh Boyd Carpenter, D.D. 


36 


Ube pastor’s Spiritual Xite 


THE PASTOR’S SPIRITUAL LIFE 

V ALUABLE as physical health and intel¬ 
lectual vigor are to the pastor, still it is 
true, indisputably true, that the spiritual 
life is his essential life. It is essential to him¬ 
self, for it determines his standing in the sight 
of God, and that standing surely is the main 
thing of importance to the pastor. God looks 
beyond the body, beyond the brain, to the 
sources of all thought and desire, and according 
as those sources are right and beautiful to the 
eye of God the man actually is right and 
beautiful. 

The spiritual life of the pastor is essential to 
his usefulness with others. Personality is the 
chief element of his power. Above all words 
or deeds the spiritual tone of a pastor, which is 
the pastor’s personality, determines his helpful 
influence. That personality reveals itself in 
his public prayers and in his unpremeditated 
conversations. Like the perfume of Mary’s 
broken box of ointment it cannot be hid, but it 
breathes in the very atmosphere of the man, 
and soon the strength or weakness of his spirit¬ 
ual life is known. If that spiritual life is 
37 




Ube Growing pastor 


strong, men are helped thereby. There is 
nothing which the world at large so quickly 
recognizes as a man who has dwelt in the secret 
place of the Most High and who comes forth 
from the very presence of God. Every Moses 
whose face beams with the reflected glory of 
the unseen God is accredited by men as a 
divinely charged messenger. The ministry is 
not a priesthood, save as every believer is a 
priest; but the minister who enters oftenest 
into the holy of holies and has heart converse 
with Jehovah is received by his fellows as one 
whose words have peculiar worth. It was 
because John was seen to be leaning on 
Christ’s bosom and so was known to be near 
the heart of the Master, that the disciples at 
the last supper beckoned to him to ascertain 
and then make known to them, the mind of 
the Master. Men are everywhere looking for 
the pastor who lives close to Christ, and when 
they find him they are more ready to listen to 
him than to any other and to believe that his 
message should be reverenced by them. 

The better the opportunities the world has 
of judging of the spiritual life of a pastor, the 
larger the necessity that that spiritual life be 
vigorous. The evangelist who travels from 




Ube pastor’s Spiritual Xtfe 


place to place and the teacher who stays only 
temporarily in a community may expect that 
their spoken words will center the thought of 
those whom they address. It makes less differ¬ 
ence, then, with their usefulness whether their 
spirit is always serene and sweet and loving. 
But with a pastor-preacher it makes all the 
difference in the world, seen as he is contin¬ 
ually, whether the eyes that trace the spoken 
words back to the spirit that inspires them find 
that spirit self-controlled and gentle and holy. 
The nearer a preacher lives to people, the 
nearer he needs to live to God. 

Spiritual life flourishes only as it has care. 

This is true of all spiritual life, in whomso¬ 
ever it may he. It has its helps, and those 
helps are many and are great. We do well to 
recall them and ponder them, and give them 
their due significance. The forces in God’s 
universe that are for spiritual life are more 
than the forces that are against it. Christ is 
stronger than Satan, and Christ is with every 
soul that seeks the Father’s glory. All the 
events of time and space work together for the 
good of the soul that loves God. It actually 
becomes unnatural for the redeemed soul that 
has passed from death unto life to do wrong. 

39 





ZTbe Growing S>astor 


All Christian people should stand before the 
spiritual life as Joshua and Caleb stood before 
Canaan, and believe that victory is sure and 
that all dangers are simply an opportunity for 
glorious conquest. The helps to the spiritual 
life are such that all hearts should be encour¬ 
aged to enter upon it and all should know that 
they will succeed. 

But the spiritual has indeed its dangers. 
Only foolish men are blind to them or dull to 
them. Again and again men have begun the 
spiritual life and have failed in it. “Ye did run 
well; who did hinder you?” is a question often 
applicable. Souls once free become entangled 
again in a yoke of bondage. First love is left. 
“Oh, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched 
you?” Disciples who seemed to breathe the 
very air of heaven have at last acted as though 
they were suffocated. It is the sorrow, the 
unspeakable sorrow, of every pastor that so 
many of his people who started for the Celestial 
City dropped out by the way. Fear and the 
Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair proved too 
trying for their spiritual life. 

The pastor is like other men in that he has 
helps and dangers to his spiritual life. Among 
his helps are his sense of responsibility for 
40 




XTbe pastor’s Spiritual Xife 


souls, his constant test of truth through refer¬ 
ence to Scripture, the necessity of clear per¬ 
ception of the meaning of Scripture and his 
dependence on the Holy Spirit for the success 
of his work. A man can serve God just as 
truly and live near God just as truly being a 
mechanic, a car-driver or a mercantile clerk as 
being a preacher. But it cannot be disguised 
that when a man is called upon to make his one 
supreme thought the religious life of his fel¬ 
lows, and is freed from the ordinary distrac¬ 
tions of business that he may the better do his 
work as such a pastor, he has very great helps 
to the cultivation of his spirituality. 

But side by side with these helps are his 
peculiar dangers. He, too, is a man, and all 
that threatens the heart of any other threatens 
his heart. Beside, the pages of history show 
very clearly that religious surroundings are 
often unfavorable to spirituality. Never were 
there more earnest people than those of 
Christ’s day, but the pet sins of religious sur¬ 
roundings characterized them, envy, jealousy, 
and such extreme exaggeration of non-essen¬ 
tials as caused mint, anise and cummin to 
have more of their thought than justice, mercy 
and humility. Like many a preacher since 
41 




TLh e Growing pastor 


their time they were so diligent in watching 
over the supposed interests of religion that 
they neglected their own sweetness of soul. 
Busy here and there with details of outward 
form, they allowed the spirit of meekness to 
escape them. They ran on errands on which 
they were not sent. They, as has been the 
case with so many of their successors, were 
supposedly friends of the bridegroom, and 
stood in the streets awaiting Him, but they 
failed to have the oil of spirituality in their 
lamps, and when He came they did not light 
Him to the wedding feast of redemption. 

If now the question is asked, What are the 
dangers peculiar to a pastor’s life to-day? the 
answer is both negative and affirmative. Nega¬ 
tive, in that it may safely be said that contro¬ 
versial bitterness is a comparatively small 
danger. Men ought to thank God that the 
theological rancor that eats out generosity and 
humility has so minor a place in this present 
generation. Christian men, in such a land as 
the United States at least, have learned to hold 
their theological views in earnestness but in love. 
They therefore avoid that peril of hatred and 
prejudice and unfairness incident to much of re¬ 
ligious antagonism. “He is a wonderful man, ’ ’ 
42 




XTbe pastor’s Spiritual %itc 


said the sage, 4 4 that can thread a needle when he 
is at cudgels in a crowd; and yet this is as easy 
as to find truth in the hurry of disputation.” 

Nor is there special danger to the spiritual 
life of the pastor from doubt about the mission 
of the Bible. That Bible is accepted as the 
very expression of the will of God, able to make 
any soul that receives it, wise unto salvation. 
The Bible is seen in a new light, but that light 
instead of minimizing the value and beauty of 
the Bible, magnifies its value and beauty. 
Pastors were never so sure of the adaptation of 
the Bible to the ends it has in mind. They 
may interpret many of its teachings from a 
different view-point than they once did, but 
that new view-point is a larger and truer con¬ 
ception of the God in whose light alone they 
can see light, and thus the Bible is more 
authoritative and more clearly infallible in its 
mission than ever. Thus pastors are saved 
from exposure to spiritual weakness through 
doubt concerning God’s word. A changed 
emphasis and an altered proportion in the 
teachings of the Bible give opportunity for a 
gladder development of the spiritual life. 

There are, however, some positive dangers 
that threaten the pastor’s spiritual life to-day. 

43 




TEbe Growing 0>astor 


One of these is the tendency to depend too 
much on machinery. It is the day of organiza¬ 
tions, committees and meetings. The theory 
is announced, “Let the church he open all the 
time and let something be doing in the church 
all the time.” That theory and other theories 
more or less like it, make pastors anxious to 
have “something doing” every hour. It seems 
as though their work could not be going on 
aright unless all sorts of societies were organ¬ 
ized and there were as many different kinds of 
societies as there are different temperaments in 
the congregation. The fellowship of the pas¬ 
tor’s heart thus becomes a fellowship with 
machinery rather than with the Holy Spirit. 
The dependence for success lies with organiza¬ 
tion rather than with Him “who works when, 
where and how He will.” The pastor is so 
absorbed in keeping up his machinery, adjust¬ 
ing it when it moves with friction and worrying 
over it when for any reason it is disabled, that 
his heart is not fed by contact with individual 
souls to whom he comes as the very medium of 
the Holy Spirit Himself. Thus he misses that 
blessing of travail for souls which is the ener¬ 
gizing life of a spiritual ministry and he real¬ 
izes the truth of Edward Caird’s phrase: “The 
44 




ZTbe pastor’s Spiritual Xtfe 


idea creates the organization, the organization 
destroys the idea.” 

A second positive danger to-day is the tend¬ 
ency to estimate success by numbers. That 
tendency led David astray, and it may lead 
other earnest hearts astray. The statistic 
habit is epidemic. Success in any matter 
means the largest possible figures. In business 
it is the largest number of dollars, in college 
the largest number of students, in newspapers 
the largest number of readers and in books the 
largest number of copies. Philanthropic effort 
is likewise put to the test of the muster roll. 
That muster roll has to be considered. The 
pastor does well to know how many are pres¬ 
ent at services of God’s worship; attendances 
at prayer-meeting, Communion and Sunday- 
school are significant. There should be great 
searching of the pastor’s heart by himself when 
people are absent and when numbers decline. 

But let not numbers be a snare. Matthew 
Arnold declares, “We worship the book of 
Numbers.” The most successful church is 
not necessarily that which can boast an over¬ 
whelming roll call. The individual and his 
development may be lost sight of in the multi¬ 
tude. More pains may often be required per- 
45 




XTbe Growing pastor 


manently to benefit one soul than temporarily 
to collect a crowd. We are to look to quality 
as well as to quantity. He who can nourish 
“the remnant,” whereby the earth shall be 
redeemed, is doing a larger work than he who 
is surrounded by a multitude that never accom¬ 
plish anything. Besides, there are churches in 
which, from the very nature of the surround¬ 
ings, the attendance at the prayer-meeting, 
evening Sabbath service and even other serv¬ 
ices is bound to decrease. The Master Him¬ 
self saw men leaving Him and was obliged to 
say to the few who remained, “Will ye also go 
away?” It would have hurt His spiritual life 
then, as it would have hurt it on Palm Sun¬ 
day when multitudes flocked about Him, to 
estimate success by numbers. Nevertheless 
there are hundreds and thousands of pastors 
who feel that their work prospers or fails 
according to the numbers who under their min¬ 
istry are added to the Communion roll. Such 
an estimate of success pulls down the spiritual 
life of any preacher, and materializes it. 

A third positive danger of to-day is the tend¬ 
ency to be discouraged. In Mr. Gal ton’s 
book on hereditary genius there is a statement 
that a gently complaining and fatigued spirit 
46 




XTbc pastor’s Spiritual %itc 


is that in which evangelical divines are very 
apt to pass their days. There is ground for 
this statement. Most pastors are in danger of 
carrying heavy hearts. There is much to make 
them heavy hearted. “Who can laugh,” asks 
Longfellow, “when he thinks of the sorrows of 
mankind?” The pastor must think of those 
sorrows; it is part of his life work to think of 
them and to he a “son of consolation.” So 
thinking of them he undertands their causes, 
he sees the part sin has to do with them, he 
also sees how foolishly and continuously the 
hearts of men turn away from the cure for sor¬ 
rows provided in the gospel, and seeing all this, 
month after month, year after year, the evil 
so great and the soul of man so perverse, he is 
tempted to he discouraged. The number of 
earnest pastors who to-day are burdened with 
a sense of their inability to do the work that 
should be done, and who consequently have 
tears in their eyes and hearts, is multitudinous. 

All such pastors, however, are entitled to 
remember that their mission is to bring joy to 
the world. They should be more filled with a 
sense of the fullness of the gospel than of the 
woe of man. God never puts a pastor where 
that pastor should not be a happy, bright, win- 
47 




Ubc Growing ©astor 


some soul. He must believe the promises of 
the world’s redemption, and must always be 
sounding trumpet tones of hope. God is not 
dead, nor is His cause dying. The battle may 
wage disappointingly to us, in our day and 
place, but it is waging victoriously to others, 
in their day and place. No pastor ever knows 
whether the long night of his toil that has 
brought nothing, may not be followed by a 
morning in which the nets shall be full of fish. 
The progress of God’s kingdom is sure. Some 
Stephen may seem to fail, but some Paul will 
take up Stephen’s incomplete work and greatly 
advance it. He who would draw the world to 
Christ must be continuously hopeful and brave. 

A fourth positive danger of the pastor to¬ 
day is the tendency to minimize the value of 
little occasions. Great audiences, public ad¬ 
dresses and scholarly preparation seem to many 
men the field of their opportunity. They 
chafe under the necessity of spending their 
strength with a handful of men, of using their 
energy with an individual and of suffering 
interruption in their studies. Many men allow 
themselves to become pettish and almost irri¬ 
table over these seemingly unworthy require¬ 
ments. They commiserate themselves on their 
48 




XTbe pastor's Spiritual Xife 


bondage to trifles and come perilously near to 
injuring their usefulness through their irri¬ 
tability. 

A pastor in Chicago, asked to deliver an 
address before a large body of influential people, 
was in his study, preparing that address, when 
the servant handed him a visiting card. The 
name on it was that of a man who had lately 
moved into his neighborhood, but of whom he 
knew nothing. The pastor looked at the card, 
felt that he could not spare time to see the 
visitor, thought he would send word through 
the servant that he was too busy for an inter¬ 
view, concluded that he could spare time and 
started for his parlor. He was irritated by the 
interruption, and felt like showing his irrita¬ 
tion. Fortunately he let the visitor speak 
first. “My wife and I have been awake all 
night, thinking of our soul’s welfare. I have 
come to ask you to help us find Christ!” 

The result of that interview was that the 
visitor and his wife soon united with the 
church. But had the pastor’s pettishness ex¬ 
pressed itself in a single word of rebuff, one of 
the greatest opportunities of usefulness would 
have been ruined. “Lord, bless our interrup¬ 
tions to-day, and use them in Thy service, and 
49 




Ube (Browing ipastor 


for Thy glory,” is a petition wise men have 
uttered and wise men still utter. Experienced 
preachers are the surest to bear this testimony: 
“Again and again I have come near missing 
my best opportunities for influencing souls, 
because I was peevish over an interruption.” 


50 









“ Why do I dare love all mankind? 

’Tis not because each face, each form 
Is comely, for it is not so; 

Nor is it that each soul is warm 
' With any Godlike glow. 

Yet there’s no one to whom’s not given 
Some little lineament of heaven, 

Some 'partial symbol, at the least, in sign 
Of what should be, if it is not, within, 
Reminding of the death of sin. 

And life of the Divine. 

There was a time, full well I know, 

When I had not yet seen you so; 

Time was when few seem’d fair; 

But now, as through the streets I go, 

There seems no face so shapeless, so 
Forlorn, but that there’s something there 
That, like the heavens, doth declare 
The glory of the great All-Fair; 

And so mine own each one I call; 

And so I dare to love you all.” 

—Henry Septimus Sutton. 


52 


Ifoelps to a pastor’s Spiritual Xlte 


THE HELPS TO A PASTOR’S 
SPIRITUAL LIFE 

N OW that we have considered the dangers 
that threaten the pastor’s spiritual life, 
let us gladly turn our attention to the 
wondrous means of help that are provided for 
that life. 

The first is, Giving the Holy Spirit His 
chance. 

In the history of Israel we find that Jehoram 
the king had turned away from Jehovah. The 
king of Moab rebels against Jehoram, where¬ 
upon Jehoram makes alliance with Jehoshapliat, 
king of Judah, and the two kings together go 
against Moab. They and their armies are soon 
in danger of dying from thirst. They bethink 
themselves of means of relief. “Is there not a 
prophet of the Lord that we may inquire of the 
Lord by him?” Yes, there is Elisha. They 
seek Elisha. He does not like Jehoram, a 
wicked king. Jehoram’s presence disturbs his 
whole soul. He feels like having nothing to 
do with Jehoram. But for Jehoshaphat’s sake, 
whom he respects, Elisha will consult God for 
53 




Ube Growing pastor 


them. “Bring me a minstrel,” he says. He 
wishes to be calmed and quieted, and put into 
a mood wherein God can communicate with 
him. The ministrel is brought. As he plays, 
Elisha’s bitterness and unrest of soul disap¬ 
pear. Then God speaks to him, and Elisha, 
sweet spirited and receptive, hears God’s mes¬ 
sage. He has given God His chance. 

There are times in my own life when I need 
the minstrel. The continuous details of the 
pastorate make my heart as indurated as stone 
and my eyes as dry as glass. Then I go into a 
quiet room and take a story like that of Ian 
Maclaren’s “His Mother’s Sermon.” The 
Scotch boy had been dedicated to the ministry 
by his mother. When she was dying she called 
him to her bedside. She felt for his head and 
stroked it. “I canna see ye noo, John, but I 
know yir there, an’ I’ve just one other wish. 
If God calls ye to the ministry, ye’ll no refuse, 
an’ the first day ye preach in yir ain kirk, 
speak a gude word for Jesus Christ, an’, John, 
I’ll hear ye that day, though ye’ll no see me, 
and I’ll be satisfied.” The minute afterward 
she was dead. 

Five years later John, after taking university 
honors, is to preach his first sermon in his 
54 




Ibelps to a pastor's Spiritual SLife 


church. He writes it, out of the abundance 
of his scholarship. It deals with Semitic 
environment and is trenchantly critical. But 
before the Sabbath comes, his aunt reminds 
him of his mother’s dying wish: “Speak a gude 
word for Jesus Christ.” 

He bows upon his knees, thrusts his sermon 
into the grate, remembers how his mother in 
his boyhood knelt each night by the white cur¬ 
tains of his bed, and he cries, “My mother, my 
mother!” 

Then he prays: “Help me to speak a 
gude word for Jesus Christ.” The Sabbath 
comes. He goes into the pulpit. It is Jesus, 
only Jesus that is in his heart, beside that 
mother. “As he preached, the preacher faded 
from before all eyes. The people saw only the 
Nazarene, heard only the Nazarene, felt only 
the Nazarene. The women wept quietly, the 
rugged faces of the men softened as when even¬ 
ing sun plays on granite stones. He spoke a 
gude word for Jesus Christ, and the people 
were blessed.” 

In the study he met his aunt. When he 
looked on her his lip quivered, for his heart was 
wrung with one wistful regret. 

“Oh, if she had only been spared to see 
55 




TLbc Growing pastor 


this day, and her prayers answered.” “Dinna 
be cast doon, laddie, nor be unbelievin’. 
Yir mither has heard every word, and is 
satisfied.” 

This is the story. I read it, and somehow 
my heart softens, my eyes fill with tears, my 
soul opens with new desire to serve Christ, I 
grow braver, sweeter and gladder. The quietly 
subduing minstrel has done his work. My life 
has wide doors to the Holy Spirit, and I am 
now ready to listen to His words and undertake 
afresh His blessed work. 

A second means of help to the pastor’s spirit¬ 
ual life is holding fast to his love for mankind. 
We are to distrust any view of Scripture or of 
society that does not fire us with love for our 
fellows. Something is wrong in us when our 
theories of life dull our interest in the men and 
women who are immediately about us. We are 
fogetting their sorrow, or overlooking their 
needs, or are becoming absorbed in some per¬ 
sonal ambitions of our own. “The cure of 
souls is the ars artium .” It is to be the 
most absorbing energy that ever lays hold 
on the heart and mind of man. Mankind 
are to be our passion. The lower they are 
the farther down are we to bend that they 
56 




Ibelpa to a Pastor’s Spiritual 2Life 


may be lifted. The wider they wander, the 
more patient must be our search. The oftener 
they repel us, the oftener we must pity and 
seek them. 

There is always the possibility that our 
scholarship or refinement or dignity may sepa¬ 
rate us from those for whom, under God, we 
sought scholarship, refinement and dignity. 
Unless our powers are instruments of helpful¬ 
ness to men they are signs of our spiritual 
deterioration. We must not grow away from 
men. The one supreme idea of our work is 
service to men. “Peace, good will to men ” is 
the announcement of the gospel. But we can 
become so engaged in building up a reputation 
for usefulness as to care less for individuals than 
for our reputation. It was love for man that 
made Christ a good minister. He never spoke 
for the sake of speaking, but always for the 
welfare of those who were about him. Having 
loved his own, He loved them until the end, 
and served them, with the towel about His 
waist and the bowl in His hand. 

“O, Lord, that I could waste my life for others, 
With no ends of my own! 

That I could pour myself out into others, 

And live for them alone. 

57 




Vbe ©rowing pastor 


Such was the life Thou livedst: self-abjuring, 
Thine own pains never easing, 

Our burdens bearing, our just doom enduring— 

A life without self-pleasing. ” 

A third means of help to the pastor’s spirit¬ 
ual life is realizing God’s presence in his work. 
God is in His world. He has never withdrawn, 
and He never will withdraw. He is here to 
succeed. He is succeeding. He assigns our 
lot, and it is always an important lot. Fidelity 
in it means our contribution to a general result 
that is certain to be good and large. No man 
need envy bis neighbor. Each man’s field of 
opportunity demands all the energy he possibly 
can give it. Half done work in small places 
tends to weaken the worker and retard the 
cause. The man that fills his place to overflow¬ 
ing is sure to be asked to help fill another place. 

We are to believe that God is with us and is 
with the work intrusted to us. We are to 
crowd our hearts with the promises of God. 
We are to be Abrahams, faithful in present 
duties and seeing Christ’s day of victory afar 
off. Christ will conquer. Word from far and 
near tells us He is conquering. That word 
should kindle fire in our souls. We should be 
aflame with hope. If, as in Pilgrim's Prog- 
58 




Ibelps to a pastor's Spiritual %itc 


ress, Satan attempts to put out the fire, sug¬ 
gesting the evils and the difficulties of the 
work, we should let Christ feed the fire by- 
pouring on it His infinite and sure promises. 

It is impossible to overestimate the beauty 
and the power of ministerial faithfulness. 
Simeon, the university preacher at Cambridge, 
England, was once so oppressed by the sense 
of his incompetency to meet the needs of his 
intellectual surroundings that he resolved to 
leave Cambridge. Just then the scene when 
Simon Peter, fearing persecution at Rome, 
was fleeing and was met by Christ, came into 
his mind. “Whither was Christ going?” 
“Christ was going into Rome, to he crucified.” 
So Christ answered to the inquiry of fleeing 
Simon. The answer touched Simon’s heart. 
Ashamed of his unfaithfulness he turned back 
to Rome, there to be crucified with his head 
downward. 

This scene so affected Simeon’s mind in his 
hours of weakness, that he, saying “my name, 
too, is Simon (Simeon),” resolved to return to 
his task and do God’s work in Cambridge as 
best he could. Over the mantel in his study 
he hung a picture of Henry Martyn, that bril- 
59 




Gbe Growing pastor 


liant and erudite scholar, that splendid and 
sublime man, so that every time he looked at it 
he might seem to hear a voice emanating from 
it and saying, “Be earnest, be earnest, be 
earnest.” 

Dr. John Watson, too, has a picture which 
always calls to him to be faithful in his minis¬ 
try. It is of Christ, by Andrea del Sarto, rep¬ 
resenting Christ after His passion, full of peace 
and majesty. Dr. Watson looks into that 
face in times of burden and discouragement, 
and it always answers back with a look of calm 
strength and accomplished victory. He looks 
into it when his life has not been completely 
dutiful, and it seems reprovingly but tenderly 
to ask of him a more devoted service, for has 
not He, the Christ, died for men! 

I also have a picture that refreshes and 
inspires me. It is of Hosea. It is the face of 
Hosea painted by Sargent and placed among 
the Prophets as they are shown on the wall of 
the Public Library in Boston. For over sixty 
years Hosea was God’s preacher to Israel. He 
brought to Israel God’s words of comfort and 
of rebuke. How he longed to help the nation! 
But they turned a deaf ear to him. Neverthe¬ 
less he stood in his place and did what God 
60 





Ifoelps to a ©astor’s Spiritual Xite 


asked of him. For sixty years he was faithful, 
absolutely faithful. Sargent has put Hosea 
among the weeping prophets. Well he might 
weep, the sins of Israel were so many and so 
great. But while the other prophets standing 
in line with him and weeping have bowed 
faces, Hosea’s face is to the front! They 
look downward, he looks forward. He is sur¬ 
rounded by the evils of his day, but he, con¬ 
scious of them all, keeps his heart and his face 
to the future. He forsees the coming of the 
Christ; he looks far, far ahead, and he knows 
that God and God’s truth will prevail and that 
all he, this prophet, has done for God will have 
helped to the consummation of God’s glory! 

Again and again I lift my eyes to Sargent’s 
Hosea, a weeping prophet indeed, but a faith¬ 
ful prophet, a prophet who has his face toward 
God’s future and who therefore sees hope, 
bright, beautiful, sure hope, and I gird myself 
anew to the work, the glad work of preaching 
the everlasting gospel. 


61 




“No man of conscience or imagination can be con¬ 
tent with his work, however men may praise it, because 
as he works his vision of what he may achieve with 
heart and skill grows clearer; no man can be satisfied 
with his life, however rich and full, because, as a man’s 
Hfe deepens and widens, its needs grow vaster and 
nobler; nor can any man be satisfied with the love he 
bestows or receives, however fortunate his lot, because 
the very act of loving increases the capacity for loving; 
and as love grows deep and tender, it seeks, by the law 
of its nature, higher unity of spirit with spirit and the 
opportunity of more complete sacrifice and surrender. 
So the immortal within grows by all contacts with the 
mortal, and every relation, work, duty and pleasure has 
that within it which will not let us rest either in attain¬ 
ment or possession —H. W. Mabie. 


62 


necessity of tbe pastor’s Growth 


THE NECESSITY OF THE PASTOR’S 
GROWTH 

T O be a good pastor a man should be a grow¬ 
ing pastor. By this is meant that he 
should constantly be enlarging in the 
elements that increase his usefulness in his 
distinct work. While he may indeed be grow¬ 
ing in a hundred other ways, still he may not 
be growing as a pastor. It is even possible to 
be growing in many ideas and manners that 
actually tend to weaken his power as a pastor. 

Whether this idea of the necessity for 
growth in pastoral power is deeply implanted 
in the convictions of ministers is not perfectly 
clear. All ministers are agreed in their desire 
that the spiritual life of individual believers 
should grow. Nothing lies with more weight 
on their hearts than such growth. Again and 
again they teach its necessity as well as its 
desirability and possibility, and they describe 
the means, methods and blessings of growth. 
A growing Christian is the most comforting 
delight a minister’s heart can know. To see a 
soul slough off its sins and weaknesses, as a 
seed drops its retarding wrappings, and emerge 
63 




XCbc Growing pastor 


into the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear 
of a beautiful Christian life makes the cup of a 
pastor’s joy to overflow. The growing Chris¬ 
tian is a glory to his home, his congregation 
and his community. “Here,” we all say, “is 
unmistakeable evidence of the power of divine 
grace.” Personally nothing in my whole min¬ 
isterial life has so rested my heart and cheered 
my courage as the sight of men and women 
who have ripened more and more into godli¬ 
ness and usefulness. Well has it been written 
in The Growing Christian , “The worthiest 
ambition of the human soul is the desire to 
increase in capacity for God; to grow, and in 
growing to become more like God.” 

All ministers are agreed, too, that the spirit¬ 
ual life of the church should grow. The 
church, wherever it is, should be an outreach- 
ing power that makes an ever-increasing im¬ 
pression on the world. One of the most godly 
pastors the state of Illinois ever had, used to fix 
his eye on the column in the annual church 
reports that stated the number of adult bap¬ 
tisms. Then he would gauge the success of 
the individual church according as the number 
for that church was large or small. Infant 
baptisms to him represented what was almost 
64 




Iftecessits of tbe pastor’s Growth 


inevitable; so did tbe gifts made to the great 
benevolent agencies of Christianity. But 
adult baptisms represented conquest outside 
the church, in the world; represented forward 
movement into growth. Such growth gave 
convincing proof that the church was answer¬ 
ing to its end and was bringing the hitherto 
unreached to their Saviour. When the church 
not only holds its own but advances, when it 
both compacts and enlarges, then in the words 
of The Growing Church , “We need have no 
fear that the church of Christ will be defeated. 
It is the embodiment of power. It means vic¬ 
tory.” 

Just as eagerly as the pastor seeks growth in 
the individual and in the church, he should 
seek growth in himself. He wishes the indi¬ 
vidual Christian to be sweeter and stronger at 
fifty years of age than at thirty. So he should 
wish that he as a pastor should be wiser and 
more effective when he is fifty than when he 
was thirty. Indeed, as he wishes the indi¬ 
vidual Christian to keep growing in sweetness 
and strength so long as the Christian lives on 
earth, so he should wish that he himself should 
increase in pastoral wisdom and effectiveness 
until the days of his ministry are done. 

65 




Ube Growing pastor 


This wish should lie deep down in his being. 
It should permeate his whole life. Out of it 
and nourished by it should spring a purpose, a 
clear, definite, unflinching purpose that, God 
helping him, he will grow, that he will aim to 
be more and more a good pastor every new 
year. This purpose will make all attained 
development unsatisfactory. However much 
people praise him or however successful he is 
said to be in his work, still he will feel that he 
has not yet apprehended that for which Christ 
designed him when He laid hold of him and 
called him into the ministry. Peril to many 
a pastor lies in the fact that at the outset of his 
ministerial life he won successes that gave him 
a feeling of complacency. It may be that in 
his youthful energy and in his hopeful enthusi¬ 
asm he stepped into a field of labor where an 
older man than he had seemed to fail and lo, 
at his bright presence and before his earnest 
appeals so much good was accomplished, so 
many people being converted and so much work 
being undertaken, that it seemed to him his 
qualifications for the pastorate were unusually 
remarkable. He felt, perhaps, that he to a 
peculiar degree understood the right methods 
of pastoral labor, and that his social and intel- 
66 




1Recessit$ of tbe pastor's Growth 


lectual and spiritual gifts were just what the 
ministry demanded. So he ceased to keep 
mind and heart open to new light upon pos¬ 
sible ways of reaching men’s souls in personal 
intercourse. “I hate to see a man whom I 
have known ten years ago, and find he is pre¬ 
cisely at the same point, neither moderated nor 
quickened, nor experienced, simply stiffened. 
He ought to he beaten. ” So said a wise helper 
of his fellows, and his words suggest that even 
in the pastorate a man’s ways may become 
stiffened and he have none of the pliability 
necessary to growth. 

When we stop to think about the matter, do 
we not find that usually in the minister’s mind 
the main idea of growth moves along the line 
of his preaching? He says, and says rightly, 
“I must be more and more of a preacher, else I 
will run to seed.” Accordingly he gives time, 
strength and thought to the matters that will 
freshen and develop him as a preacher. All 
this effort is good effort and needed effort. But 
a minister should grow as a pastor as truly as 
he should grow as a preacher. It is true that 
he will hear more from the outside world if he 
grows as a preacher, his name oftener will be in 
the newspapers and one and another more fre- 
67 




Zbc Growing pastor 


quently will quote his words. But it is almost 
certain that if he grows as a pastor he will be 
actually reaching men’s souls and effectively 
accomplishing the purpose of the ministry, 
(even though his work is unpraised and his 
name unmentioned), as scarcely any brilliant 
preacher succeeds in doing. Somehow it has 
always been the growing pastor who has laid 
his hand on individual lives the firmest and 
impressed them the deepest; he it is who has 
got his ideas the farthest down into their being 
and permanently enthroned the Christ nearest 
to their heart’s center. 

In Alice in Wonderland there is a scene 
where Alice, after running with great vigor for 
a little while, suddenly stops and says, “Well.” 
Then the Queen of the white country says, 
“What is it?” “Why,” said Alice, “in my 
country when one runs and runs and runs, you 
get somewhere.” “Oh,” said the Queen of 
the white country, “it is not so here; you have 
to run and run and run to stay where you 
are.” That is exactly as it is in the pastorate; 
a minister must grow and grow and grow sim¬ 
ply to hold his own. If he is to keep at the 
head of his people and do his work aright, he 
must always and forever be pressing forward. 

68 




IRecesstts of tbe pastor's Growth 


When Absalom endeavored to win the hearts 
of Israel he passed rapidly from old methods to 
new methods. First he aimed to appear 
attractive to people, then he sought to place 
himself where his path and their paths would 
meet, then he learned the words of kind greet¬ 
ing, then he showed how attentive a listener he 
could be, then he expressed deep interest in 
their affairs and gave assurance of his concern 
for their welfare. It is an old saying that the 
wise man learns even from his enemies. So 
pastors are wise when they examine the meth¬ 
ods used by Absalom and the methods used by 
others who in business, politics or society, seek 
to win influence over their fellows. To repro¬ 
duce in his own high efforts whatever, being 
fair, upright and legitimate, is serviceable in 
other spheres of influence to the winning of 
men’s hearts is the growing pastor’s privilege 
and duty. 

Growing pastors usually are growing preach¬ 
ers. Such pastors are the men whose compan¬ 
ionship with others constantly brings them 
into new acquaintance with the needs of 
humanity and whose realization of the adapta¬ 
tion of the truths of God’s word for such needs 
constantly deepens. Thus such pastors preach 
69 




TLbc Growing pastor 


God’s truths out of a heart permeated at the 
same time with the love of particular souls and 
with the conviction that these truths and these 
only can meet the needs of those souls. A 
man cannot be a growing pastor without wish¬ 
ing to be, and aiming to be, a growing preacher. 
The closer a pastor comes to the ignorance, 
waywardness and sorrow of his people, the 
warmer and more winning will be the message 
of the Sabbath. When a pastor grows into 
sympathy, genuine sympathy with his people, 
so that seeing matters from their view-point he 
is able to approach the discussion of those mat¬ 
ters with his people’s prejudices in mind, he is 
apt, if he devotedly loves the people, to speak 
words that go straight to their souls, words 
that bring a blessing and leave no resentment. 

Pius X., in his first encyclical, has made a 
statement applicable to every part of the Chris¬ 
tian church, as well as to his own particular 
communion. ‘‘While esteeming worthy of all 
praise those young priests who dedicate them¬ 
selves to useful studies in every branch of 
learning, the better to prepare themselves to 
defend the truth and refute the calumnies of 
the faith, yet we cannot conceal, nay, we pro¬ 
claim in the most open manner possible, that 
70 




mecessitp of tbe pastors Growth 


our preference is and ever will be for those 
who, while cultivating ecclesiastic and literary- 
erudition, dedicate themselves more closely to 
the welfare of souls through the exercises of 
those ministries proper to a priest zealous for 
the divine glory.” 

Thus Pius X. pleads for a new recognition of 
the usefulness of the pastor as he breaks the 
bread of life to the little ones and teaches the 
gospel to the poor and announces freedom to 
the captive and sight to the blind. In so 
pleading he meets a crying need and a large 
opportunity. Once again let us bring the pas¬ 
tor to the front, the man who shepherds souls. 
He will be worthy to have place at the front, if 
he is a growing pastor. He will continue at 
the front, only as his growth is constant. The 
growing pastor must know the troubles of men’s 
minds better when he is sixty than when he 
was forty; he must be a wiser, stronger leader 
of the flock; he must be more skillful in apply¬ 
ing the remedies of God’s truth to the ills of 
his sheep; he must be more trusted by those 
sheep; he must be more self-sacrificing, more 
unselfish, more tender and more winsome. 

Once a shepherd, who had led and protected 
an eastern flock for over twenty years, was 
71 




Ubc Orowtna pastor 


asked whether he was any more capable in 
caring for sheep than when he first took charge 
of sheep. “I feel I am a better shepherd than 
when I began,” he answered, “for I know so 
much more about the habits of sheep and about 
food for them and about their dangers than I 
did at first. It is a constant surprise to me to 
see how every new sheep has to be studied; no 
two of them are alike. I am sure I have 
grown more appreciative of their natures and 
more considerate of their weaknesses, and I am 
more and more convinced they need a shep¬ 
herd’s care.” “And do you think you have 
learned about them all there is to be learned?” 
“All there is to be learned! No; if I did not 
learn something new all the time I believe I 
should forget what I have already learned.” 


72 







11 He was so human! Neither strong nor weak, 
Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, 
But sate an equal guest at every board. 

No beggar ever felt him condescend, 

No prince presume; for still himself he bare 
At manhood’s simple level, and where’er 
He met a stranger, there he left a friend.” 

—James Russell Lowell. 


74 


possibilities ot a pastor’s Growth 


THE POSSIBILITIES OF A PASTOR’S 
GROWTH 

O NE of the most interesting stories in 
ministerial experience is the account 
William M. Taylor gives of his growth 
in pastoral usefulness. It is a mere incident 
in his experience, hut it is a very suggestive 
incident. 

When he began his life as a pastor he started 
in to make calls accompanied by a church offi¬ 
cer. At each new home visited he made a 
brief talk and offered prayer. The presence of 
the church officer caused him to feel that his 
talk and prayer should take a new form in each 
new home. As a consequence, he came to the 
end of the afternoon’s calls wearied in mind 
and body. He soon saw that such a method of 
calling would break him down. Accordingly 
on the next round of visits he asked the church 
officer to divide with him the services in the 
homes. The church officer upon the next 
occasion claimed that he had engagements that 
would prevent him from accompanying his pas¬ 
tor in calling. Then, alone, Dr. Taylor started 
in to do his calling. He found that under 
75 




Ube ©rowing pastor 


some circumstances it was well to announce 
the particular streets along which he would 
call, and under other circumstances it was bet¬ 
ter not to make such announcement; that 
under some circumstances it was well to have 
prayer with a family and under other circum¬ 
stances it was better not to attempt to have 
such prayer. But he found one feature invari¬ 
ably helpful to pastoral calling, namely, ability 
to connect the occasion with some religious 
idea. 

His thought was this. Suppose he enters a 
house in which is Holman Hunt’s engraving, 
“The Light of World.” As easily and natu¬ 
rally as possible he refers to the picture and 
then tells a story about the artist. The story 
is, that some years ago a minister was a guest 
in the home of the gentleman who owns the 
original painting. At the time of his visit the 
picture was undergoing the process of refram¬ 
ing, and so he was permitted to examine it 
minutely. In one of the lower corners, where 
the words would in ordinary circumstances 
have been covered by the frame, he found, in 
the handwriting of the artist himself, this ex¬ 
pression: “Wee me praetermittas , Domine .” 
“Nor pass me by, 0 Lord.” So Dr. Taylor 
76 




possibilities ot a pastor’s Growth 


suggests “from the prayer of the painter a very 
natural lesson, all the more powerful because 
of its incidental character, may be read to the 
possessor of the painting.” 

It is in ability to use the pastor’s sphere for 
such appropriate application of truth that the 
pastor may grow. The man who never can be 
a powerful pulpit pleader can be a powerful 
parlor pastor. It is all a question of resources, 
of sensitiveness to the situation and of grace in 
choosing the word for the hour. Such re¬ 
sources can be accumulated, such sensitiveness 
can be cultivated and such grace can be 
obtained by practice. 

Here it is that every bit of information a 
pastor can secure may eventually stand him in 
stead, especially information that serves to link 
the material with the spiritual, the temporal 
with the eternal. The value of general culture 
in the pastor thus becomes clear. The more 
he knows about the ordinary articles that fill 
a home, that occupy an office, that are part of 
a factory or farm, the more material he has 
with which to link a thought that may lead 
souls straight into the light of God. He 
meets the boy at the plough and describes to 
the boy the eastern plough with its one handle 
77 






XTbe Growing IPastor 


and then applies the words “having put his 
hand to the plough.” He meets the youth at 
the loom, and then he tells how David Living¬ 
stone worked in a mill and educated himself 
for God’s service. He meets the road-maker, 
and he refers to Hugh Miller who broke stones 
for the highways of Scotland and carried lofty 
purposes in his heart the while. He tells the 
woman in her silks of Lady Huntington and 
Elizabeth Ery, and touches on the beauty 
of their Christian consecration. He meets 
young women in their ease and refers to Sister 
Dorothy and her gift of herself to the healing 
of England’s sick. He talks with the scholars 
about George John Romanes and his studies in 
natural science, and of Romanes’ ultimate rest 
in the Christian faith. 

There is not a worthy picture known to the 
pastor, nor a worthy statue, adornment or 
machine, nor a worthy book that may not be a 
means of assisting the pastor in his usefulness. 
He does rightly in craving to know about the 
things that are of concern to his parishoners. 
Business men are pleased when pastors have 
intelligent acquaintance with their business and 
show interest in it. There are hosts of people 
who feel that the pastor dwells in a world aloof 
78 




possibilities of a pastor’s Growth 


from their own, and that the pastor would not 
say on Sunday what he says if he had actual 
acquaintance with the affairs of life as they 
have; the pastor seems to them visionary and 
impracticable, and his principles impossible. 
It is a super-incumbent necessity, if he is to 
make his words accomplish their end, that he 
mingle with men and bring his own holy char¬ 
acter into touch with the affairs of their lives. 
“Children, have ye any meat?” Christ asked as 
he drew near to the disciples whose business 
was the fishing business. “Have you caught 
anything?” No, they had not. Then He gave 
them such business advice as He could give. 
He showed Himself their interested friend, 
interested in their business. They were ready 
now for some new revelation from Him, and 
He was aware of their readiness. 

Merely to go into a home to show off one’s 
learning is despicable in a pastor. It is drag¬ 
ging the gold of God in the mire of selfishness. 
The true pastor never is anything but a pastor. 
He is not an artist, not a lecturer, not a gentle¬ 
man, not a scholar for the sake of being an 
artist, lecturer, gentleman or scholar, but for 
the sake of being a pastor. He has no passion 
but the passion of souls. Every interest of his 
79 




TLhc Growing pastor 


life springs from and returns to this passion. 
He wishes knowledge, that he may use it for 
the spiritual help of men. He is glad to be 
recognized and even praised if thereby he can 
have free access to the hearts of his fellows. 
He rejoices when money comes to him, because 
he hopes by it he shall have larger oppor¬ 
tunity of reaching the needy. And he is 
pleased when his manners are accredited as 
gentlemanly, because he hopes that now an 
avenue of approach is available to him where¬ 
by he can influence special persons for his 
Master. 

To meet the openings thus presented in an 
active pastorate requires all the resources that 
a pastor can secure. Cecil was right when he 
said of the minister: “He is a merchant em¬ 
barking in extensive concerns. A little ready 
money in the pocket will not answer the de¬ 
mands that will be made upon him. Some of 
us seem to think that it will, but they are 
grossly deceived. There must be a well-fur¬ 
nished account at the bankers.” 

This, however, is true, that the pastor who 
occupies his mind and heart deeply with the 
affairs of his people and with the affairs that 
should interest them, has a stimulus for his own 
80 




possibilities of a pastor’s Growth 


education that is powerful and unfailing. Here 
it is that every pastor can grow. He may 
never have the intellectual acuteness that 
enables him to understand the writings of 
metaphysicians, he may lack in ability to 
fathom the depths of “the philosophy of the 
categorical imperative,” nor may he ever be 
able to grasp the intricacies of mechanical con¬ 
trivance. But he can know the concrete facts 
of human life and he can know the great truths 
of history and he can know the meaning and 
the application of the principles of Christ, and 
in such knowledge he can grow, grow with each 
new year, grow splendidly and well. It is 
most assuring, the way in which such a devoted 
pastor grows. Each soul becomes a study to 
him, an arousing study. He has an end in 
view in all his work. It is not desultory. 
There is a special reason why he reads and 
thinks. His attention now notices facts that 
hitherto were scarcely observed, and if ob¬ 
served, were not pondered. His* interests 
broaden as his concern for individual souls and 
homes broadens. It seems as though the win¬ 
dows of his mind had clearer glass in them 
than before and as though the eyes that 
looked through those windows saw farther and 
81 




XCbe Growing pastor 


more distinctly than once. Dr. Theodore L. 
Cuyler has said, “My motto was: ‘Study God’s 
Word in the morning, and door-plates in the 
afternoon.’” Was not that very studying of 
door-plates, and the intimacy thus obtained 
with the lives of the people, a stimulus in the 
next day’s study of God’s Word? And was not 
this motto the explanation whereby we under¬ 
stand why it is that Dr. Cuyler has never 
ceased to be a growing man and a growing 
pastor? 

What in its larger degree has been possible 
to Dr. Cuyler is in its own degree possible to 
all pastors. Mr. Moody, student of the Bible 
as he was, would never have understood that 
Bible and would never have been able to preach 
it as he did, had he not gone constantly into 
the inquiry-room and constantly, too, to any 
homes that wished his presence. He himself 
once told how when he was in Dundee he was 
asked to call upon a poor man who had been 
bedridden for a long time. He went as 
though he was to be the giver of a blessing to 
the sick man. He had not been long with the 
man before he found that the man was giving 
him a blessing. Leaving the sick room he 
said: “I believe that when the angels pass over 
82 




possibilities of a pastor's Growth 


Dundee, they will stop at this house for re¬ 
freshment.” 

How could Dr. Frederick W. Farrar have 
ripened as he did and have preached as he did 
unless he had been a visitor in the neighbor¬ 
hood of his church. His stout words against 
intemperance, his intrepid words against dis¬ 
honesty, his scathing words concerning im¬ 
purity and his pitiful words concerning life’s 
woes and pains and agonies, how could they 
have been penned and spoken had he never 
visited in the parish of Saint Margaret’s as it 
lies about Westminster Abbey? The secret of 
it all is this, he put method into all his activi¬ 
ties—method in study, method in writing, 
method in recreation, and method in pastoral 
visitation. He once stated that with all his 
manifold offices there was not a case of sickness 
or trouble in the parish of Saint Margaret’s 
that he did not personally attend. His three 
curates made the ordinary parochial visits, and 
among the four every one of his parishoners 
was seen, but he himself followed up the cases 
of need. 

It is not, however, the visitation of the sick 
and dying that alone produces growth, even 
though Spurgeon once said from his pulpit, “I 
83 




XTbe Growing ©astor 


have been this week to visit two of my church 
members who were near eternity, and both of 
them were as happy as if they were going to a 
wedding. Oh, it makes me preach like a lion 
when I see how my people can die.” It is the 
visitation of the strong and the active that 
likewise produces growth. It makes a man 
preach like a lion when he sees how his people 
can live and do live. That is, if the pastor 
genuinely loves them, loves them as his own 
soul, and thinks, studies and preaches for 
them. 

A pastor may go among his people in a for¬ 
mal way, carrying a dry heart and a cobwebbed 
mind; in such case he brings home a drier 
heart and a more heavily cobwebbed mind. 
But if he goes purposing to find their lack, to 
study their temptation, and to love them into 
the kingdom of grace, with every element of 
heart and mind alert, its tentacles stretching 
out in mid-air to lay hold on every helpful idea 
that can be reached, then he is sure to grow in 
heart and mind alike, and to become an ever 
increasingly effective pastor. 


84 
















“Lord, give me the blessing of Jacob—his best bless¬ 
ing—his power to bless. Make it impossible for me to 
stay at the top of the ladder, even though that be Heaven. 
Send me down the golden stair—down to the pillows of 
stone, down to the nights of sorrow, down to the limbs 
that are languid, down to the souls that are sad. Send 
me with a breath of Eden, send me with a flower of Para¬ 
dise, send me with a cluster of the grapes of Canaan. 
Send me to the hours that precede the daybreak—those 
darkest hours which come before the dawn. Send me 
to the hearts without a home, to the lives without a love, 
to the crowds without a compass, to the ranks without a 
refuge. Then shall I have the birthright of the first¬ 
born: then shall I have the blessing of the mighty God 
of Jacob .”—George Matheson. 


86 


pastor’s Expectancy of Growth 


THE PASTOR’S EXPECTANCY OF 
GROWTH 

I T is with a ring of gladness that Professor 
Austin Phelps, in his Men and Books , says 
to the pastor: “Growth is your destiny.” 
It certainly should be so regarded. Every man 
who enters the ministry should feel that he has 
planted his feet on a highway that will carry 
him, if he treads it circumspectly, straight 
onward and upward. It is not merely that 
voices are always calling to him “excelsior,” it 
is also that every feature of his work tends to 
supply the power by which he naturally rises 
higher. This is the way Dr. Phelps puts it: 
“Your courage should be sustained by the cer¬ 
tainty of your mental growth. You will not 
always be what you are now in point of intel¬ 
lectual strength. Your professional labors 
will compel growth. Your power of mental 
appropriation will increase marvelously, hence 
will come the faculty of rapid reading. Noth¬ 
ing is more sure to disclose itself as a result of 
years of scholarly reading and professional 
composing in alternation, than the gift of rapid 
mastery in both. As you will write sermons 
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Ube (Browing pastor 


rapidly, so you will appropriate books to your 
stock of thought rapidly. Some volumes 
which now would cost you a second reading, 
you will by and by master with one. Some 
which now require a full and cautious study, 
by and by you will appropriate by their tables 
of contents and their prefaces only.” 

It is exhilarating to believe that we may look 
forward to such growth as to a certainty. It 
makes the burden of work and the burden of 
solicitude grow lighter, as we forsee ourselves 
surely accumulating more and more strength 
for their carrying. The pastor’s life by its 
very nature is a crescendo life. It seems per¬ 
fectly clear that a man cannot give himself 
wholly to it, holding back no one of his facul¬ 
ties and keeping in leash no one of his possi¬ 
bilities, without passing from strength to 
strength. Dean Swift, toward the close of his 
career, looking at one of his books written in 
the zenith of his unwasted energy exclaimed 
with a sob: “My God, what a genius I had 
when I wrote that book!” But Dean Swift 
after the writing of that book had given him¬ 
self up to distraction and self-indulgence, and 
so it was his progress ceased. Others, too, 
have done work in earlier years that far ex- 




pastor’s Expectancy of Growth 


ceeded the work of later years. Philip J. 
Bailey wrote his Festus while comparatively 
young, and never afterward produced any 
literary work comparable in strength and 
beauty to his Festus . But a true, devoted 
pastor, applying himself unreservedly to study 
and to pastoral labor, need never fear that to¬ 
morrow will find him a weaker man than to¬ 
day. He is bound to he a mightier man in 
knowledge of truth, in love of souls and in 
efficiency of influence. He may study such an 
one as Tennyson, starting with his “Airy, 
Fairy Lilian,” and slowly expanding into his 
world-moving “In Memoriam.” He may 
watch the character of one like Abraham 
Lincoln, who in his debates with Douglas ex¬ 
pressed now and then “a note of personal 
antagonism,” but who in his later speeches 
and addresses went higher and higher until all 
personal bitterness seemed to die out of him 
and he could say: “I have not willingly planted 
a thorn in the heart of any man.” So a pastor 
may believe that like Tennyson he will grow in 
ability of expression and like Lincoln in worth¬ 
iness of character. 

There ought then to be spring and elasticity 
in the heart of a pastor. Cheerfulness should 




Ube Growing pastor 


be his characteristic. “This time now at hand 
is a good time,” he should say, “and a better 
time is coming.” It was John’s vision, seen 
in exile on narrow, far-aloof Patmos, of the 
resplendent city of God coming down from 
heaven to earth and making all earth rejoice, 
that transformed present Patmos into a garden 
of opportunity and haloed the future with a 
sanctifying beauty. The world’s to-morrow is 
always to be better than its to-day, and so is 
the true minister’s future always to be better 
than his past or present. Present work is 
therefore to be done with a verve that gives it 
a relish. Full work, overflowing work, the 
measure pressed down and shaken together, is 
to be done day after day, year after year, as a 
glorious privilege. “I hate,” says George 
Eliot, “to see a man’s arms drop down as if he 
was shot, before the clock’s fairly struck, just 
as if he’d never a bit o’ pride and delight in 
his work. The very grindstone will go on turn¬ 
ing a bit after you loose it.” So it will, and 
even if at times the pastor’s work seems to him 
much like the work of a grindstone, still let 
him turn and keep turning and rejoice to turn, 
that by his very turning he may show the world 
how truly his heart is in his work and how he 




pastor’s Expectancy of Growth 


gladly will spend and will be spent for the 
good of human souls. 

The dull and the gloomy have no rightful 
place in a pastor’s thought. “Where sin 
abounded, grace did much more abound” is a 
Scripture telling us that the bright side of the 
gospel is the larger side, and telling us, too, 
that only as a pastor lives, prays and labors in 
that larger side is he living, praying and labor¬ 
ing as a gospel pastor should. The comfort 
that comes into a pastor’s heart when he actu¬ 
ally believes that God is marking out his path¬ 
way and is protecting every step he takes in it, 
is most consoling. What strength Bushnell’s 
sermon, “Every Man’s Life a Plan of God,” 
has brought to the people of the pulpit as well 
as to the people of the pew! Likewise com' 
fort, consoling and strengthening comfort, may 
come into a pastor’s heart from the belief that 
God is surely leading him on to growth and 
will make him more and more of a man for 
Him. 

A late book, written in London by the pen 
of Canon Newbolt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 
deals with what he calls “Some Secret Hin¬ 
drances to the Realization of Priestly Ideals.” 
Let us drop the word “priestly” and use, what 
91 




Ube (Browing ©astor 


Canon Newbolt really means, “ministerial” in 
its place. What then are these hindrances? 
He names them as Vanity, Sloth, Despondency, 
Impatience and Self-Neglect. If in the thought 
of an observant, scholarly, earnest fellow-pastor 
these are hindrances to a pastor’s growth, they 
should be examined one by one until their full 
nature is realized, and then they should be 
resisted to their death. 

There are tendencies—every pastor knows 
the fact—to vanity, in the pastor’s life. His 
very place as leader is his because in some 
respects he is the most competent man in the 
community for the place. To be a leader is to 
be exposed to pride. And as to sloth, is it not 
true that the pastor, unlike so many of his fel¬ 
lows, is not obliged to report at an office every 
morning at a given hour and stay there a 
requisite period? More largely than many 
men he may do what he pleases with his time, 
so long as a certain few engagements are kept 
regularly. Then there is despondency; it 
walks straight into many a pastor’s study and 
sits with him almost as a welcome guest. Also 
there is impatience; it is a sort of shadow to 
enthusiasm. The enthusiast and the philoso¬ 
pher differ only in this: the enthusiast is eager 
92 




pastor’s Expectancy of Growtb 


to have his idea carried out immediately, the 
philosopher realizes the need of time in which 
to carry it out. And as to self-neglect, yes 
every pastor is aware, sadly aware, that again 
and again he has tried to pull out the mote 
from another’s eye when the beam was in his 
own eye. “Lest I myself should be a cast¬ 
away, ’ ’ Paul said of himself, and so saying he 
warned every pastor of the danger there may 
be in self-neglect. Out of touch with God 
may put us out of touch with man. 

“Only a word, yes, only a word, 

That the Spirit’s small voice whispered, ‘Speak’; 
But the worker passed on, unblessed and weak, 
Whom you were meant to have stirred 
To courage, devotion and love anew, 

Because when the message came to you 
You were out of touch with your Lord. 

“Only a note, yes, only a note, 

To a friend in a distant land; 

The Spirit said, ‘Write,’ but then you had planned 
Some different work and you thought 
It mattered little. You did not know 
’Twould have saved a soul from sin and woe- 
You were out of .touch with your Lord. 

“Only a song, yes, only a song, 

That the Spirit said, ‘Sing to-night; 

Thy voice is thy Master’s by purchased right.’ 

But you thought, ‘Mid this motley throng, 

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Zbc (Browing ©astor 


I care not to sing of the city of God. ’ 

And the heart that your words might have reached 
grew cold— 

You were out of touch with your Lord. 

“Only a day, yes, only a day, 

But oh! can you guess, my friend, 

Where the influence reaches and where it will end, 
Of the hours that you frittered away? 

The Master’s command is ‘Abide in me,’ 

And fruitless and vain will your service be 
If out of touch with your Lord.” 

The knowledge of these hindrances, how¬ 
ever, should not appal the pastor, but should 
arouse him. Forewarned with him should be 
forearmed. Every pastor should say: “Where 
I am in danger of being weak, there I will put 
forth special effort to be strong. I will make 
vanity give way to humility, sloth to activity, 
despondency to hopefulness, impatience to 
perseverance, and self-neglect to godliness.” 

What will be the outcome of such a pur¬ 
pose? This, that the pastor will fit better and 
better into his place, and will grow more and 
more into likeness to Christ. This does not 
mean that his work or his progress will always 
satisfy him; they probably will sorely disap¬ 
point him. He will look hack from time to 
time over the record he has made, and compar- 
94 




pastor’s Expectancy of Growth 


ing it with what he intended that record to 
be, he will be humbled; not humiliated, but 
humbled. Such humility, however, will be his 
beauty and his strength. As life goes on noth¬ 
ing is so attractive as tenderness, love and 
peace. There comes a time when wit and 
cleverness and grandeur of knowledge, splen¬ 
did as they are, do not accomplish so much for 
the Master as sweet friendship and winsome 
godliness. As the pastor grows toward the 
endless life, with its open vistas of God’s sin¬ 
less and beauteous heaven, he should, like 
Moses in the mount, have more and more of 
the light of God radiating from him. On into 
the years he may go, “growing older” as the 
saying is, but growing younger in the buoyancy 
of his hope, in the brightness of his spiritual 
vision and in the charm of his personal pres¬ 
ence. Caleb’s long life gave special value to 
his declaration of confidence in God. Samuel’s 
many years made his recital of God’s faithful¬ 
ness the more impressive. Paul could write 
and did write increasingly helpful words as he 
became “Paul the aged.” And John gave to 
the world its clearest, most winsome conception 
of heaven when he was past fourscore years old. 

If any man among all the multitudes who 
95 




Zhc Crowing pastor 


fill the various spheres of life’s honorable 
activity is to be congratulated on his oppor¬ 
tunity, it is the pastor, the Christian pastor. 
To him the Great Shepherd of souls has en¬ 
trusted His work. Over him the angels that 
are sent forth to minister to the heirs of salva¬ 
tion, watch with protecting solicitude. Before 
him are the souls of the children of men, in 
their pathetic need, waiting for his sympathy, 
love and provision. Beady for him is all the 
wisdom, strength and grace of the world’s 
great Lover. Waiting for him at the gateway 
of the eternal fold is the Head Pastor who 
knows each sheep the under pastor has aided 
and each sheep he has guided homeward. Who, 
if not he, should grow? Who, if not he, 
should always grow? Who, if not he, should 
not only throb more and more with earth, but 
also thrill more and more with heaven? 

“The weary man, the little child, 

The vigorous youth, the mother mild, 

Lift up their eyes and wait for me— 

What shall I say to them for Thee? 

“Theirs is the struggle and the strife, 

Mine are the peaceful paths of life; 

They are of deeds, I am of thought— 

How shall I touch them as I ought? 

96 




pastor’s Expectancy of ©rowtb 


“We are close brothers; all we men 
Sin, and are sorry, sin again, 

And climb, and slip and yet aspire; 
Thou, only Thou, canst bear us higher. 

“Give me, O gracious Master, power 
To read the signs and seize the hour, 
And with the tokens of thy love 
Uplift their hearts and mine above. 

“Lord, unto thee I lift my eyes,— 
Inspire me, make me brave and wise 
And give me faith that I may see 
How wide and large thy precepts be. 
Then thine own message let me take 
To these Thy people for love’s sake. ’ ’ 


07 




“If we with earnest effort could succeed 
To make our life one long connected prayer, 

As lives of some perhaps have been and are; 

If never leaving Thee, we had no need 
Our wandering spirits back again to lead 
Into Thy presence, but continued there, 

Like angels standing on the very highest stair 
Of the sapphire throne,—this were to pray indeed. 

“But if distractions manifold prevail, 

And if in this we must confess we fail, 

Grant us to keep at least a prompt desire, 
Continual readiness for prayer and praise, 

An altar heap'd and waiting to take fire 
With the least spark, and leap into a blaze.” 

—Richard C. Trench. 


98 


Zhc pastor’s public praters 


THE PASTOR’S PUBLIC PRAYERS 


O NE of the largest spheres of growth in pas¬ 
toral efficiency is the sphere of public 
prayer. The minister that is permitted 
the privilege of voicing his own heart and the 
heart of others in timely prayers has one of the 
sweetest, highest, holiest and most developing 
privileges accorded to man. 

It may be that in some instances this privi¬ 
lege has not received its due recognition. 
There are ministers who perhaps have thought 
that accuracy, felicity and feeling were essen¬ 
tial to helpful preaching, but have not thought 
that accuracy, felicity and feeling were equally 
essential to helpful prayer. To think in this 
way is to think unwisely for others and ham- 
peringly for oneself. In a non-liturgical min¬ 
istry it is at least an open question whether in 
the course of a lifetime a pastor does not have 
more opportunity for aiding human souls 
through his public prayers than through his 
public speaking. There are numberless occa¬ 
sions when prayer is the only means the pastor 
may have for religious expression; if he fails to 
bring the soul near to God then, he fails 
99 


L.of C. 




Zbc Growing Pastor 


entirely, his opportunity is gone. There are, 
too, numberless occasions when hearts can be 
prepared for the work of instruction only as 
they are first calmed and rested by prayer. 

Without doubt very many ministers are now 
liying in an environment that demands careful 
attention to this special phase of the pastor’s 
work. The more aesthetic the tastes and the 
more refined the perceptions of a congregation 
become the more desirous the congregation are 
that the service of prayer should be uplifting 
to them. The demand for worthiness of ex¬ 
pression in public prayer is on the increase. 
So far as we can for see, that demand will con¬ 
tinue to increase. We should rejoice that such 
a stronger demand on the part of the people 
forces the pastor to a new pondering of this 
inestimable opportunity for usefulness and for 
personal development through it. What shall 
he do about it? 

First of all, he will do well if he sets true 
value on the ministry of public prayer. The 
world has always needed timely prayer and 
always will need it. The people needed it 
when Solomon dedicated the temple, and 
needed it when Daniel made special confession 
for Israel. The disciples needed it when 
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XTbe pastor’s public praters 


Christ offered his intercessory petitions as John 
records them in the seventeenth chapter of his 
Gospel story. The day for timely prayer will 
never cease. There will be public occasions 
when no liturgical phraseology can possibly 
accomplish the ends designed for public prayer. 
Many such are in the minds of men whose 
experience with human life is somewhat pro¬ 
longed. There have been funeral occasions 
when the prayer, either with or apart from 
other services, has been the supreme benedic¬ 
tion of the hour. There have been ecclesias¬ 
tical gatherings, marked by a peculiar joy or a 
peculiar sorrow, in which sympathetic hearts 
and sympathetic voices through timely prayer 
have brought the assemblage to the foot of 
God’s throne as the most beautiful words in all 
literature written even two days beforehand 
could not do. People would be deprived of a 
most helpful means of grace if public prayer 
were not timely. This is especially true of the 
simpler folk, and of those whose hearts are 
deepest touched by grief and of those who are 
suddenly brought into some great convulsion 
of soul. The pastor can never meet the needs 
of the people apart from the ministry of timely 
prayer. 


101 





TIbe Growing pastor 


Then, secondly, the pastor will do well if he 
realizes the demand for proper expression in 
prayer. Such expression cannot be secured by 
mere repetition of sentences or paragraphs 
used by any one else. The heart of the indi¬ 
vidual pastor does not voice itself in any such 
way. He is wise in studying the Scriptures 
and in having full acquaintance with all their 
phraseology. The spirit of such phraseology 
and even the language of such phraseology 
cannot penetrate too deep into his nature. He 
is wise, too, in studying liturgies, and in know¬ 
ing spiritual sentences as they occur in such 
liturgies and in other writings. He will learn 
many a lesson of dignity, beauty and appro¬ 
priateness of expression from such study. But 
he must constantly and searchingly be on his 
guard lest Scripture phraseology and liturgical 
sentences become a snare to his own devotion 
and a hindrance to the devotion of his people. 
He may fall into the use of their familiar 
words as into the line of least resistance; they 
may become cold and lifeless to him, and cold 
and lifeless to others. The call to timely 
prayer is a call to the spirit of prayer. The 
pastor’s soul must breathe through his utter r 
ances to have them answer to their high oppor- 
103 




Ube pastor's public praters 


tunity. The people must be able to recognize 
that his soul is in them and to recognize, too, 
that they express exactly what they wish ex¬ 
pressed, if they are to bring the people into the 
very holy of holies. If ever a pastor’s lips 
should not hesitate nor stumble it is when he 
is engaged in public prayer. He is dealing 
with the King of kings, the Lord God Omni¬ 
potent. His words, his manner, his tone, all 
should lead the people unerringly and un- 
deviatingly into the presence of the great white 
throne. It is a wrong to others, it is a hurt to 
himself, it is a failure to the service when a 
pastor slights in any way the opportunity for 
timely prayer. 

There is great significance in the fact, and 
the fact must not be overlooked, that books of 
prayer have always been in use in the Christian 
church. Some special persons are able to voice 
the needs of humanity better than others. 
The people feel so. Accordingly the people 
have taken and have rejoiced in taking the 
words prepared by others and have appropriated 
them to their own use. So the liturgical 
prayers of Christendom have originated. So, 
too, it is that to-day in many private dwellings 
and in many sick rooms are found copies of 
103 




XTbe (Browing pastor 


Prayers of the Ages , Prayers Ancient and 
Modern , Bishop Wilson's Devotions , and simi¬ 
lar works. People often feel their own in¬ 
ability, through illness, weariness, distress or 
perplexity, to put their situation before God as 
it is, and therefore they resort to these books 
of special prayers with relief and with com¬ 
fort. All this is suggestive. It makes the 
pastor realize the need, the indicated need, of 
such use of public prayer by him as shall 
satisfy these souls. The more emphatically 
does he realize this need if he sees these books 
of special prayer coming to have an increas¬ 
ingly large place in the homes of sensitive 
hearts. Here then is a sort of challenge to 
him. He must conduct the service of public 
prayer in a way that will bring blessings to the 
sensitive and weary and distressed. He must 
lead them in their prayer with all the sympathy 
and with all the gentleness of a shepherd. He 
must see that these people reach God’s green 
pastures and God’s still waters, and that they 
feel His presence with them in their dark 
valley. 

The opportunity for growth thus presented to 
a pastor is both large and beautiful. It de¬ 
mands that he look deep into the nature of the 
104 




Ube pastor's public praters 


hearts around him, that he study well the dis¬ 
tinctive features of each new hour and that he 
use language that in that hour will he what the 
hearts need. This is, it is true, a discipline 
of mind, a discipline of perception, of putting 
oneself in another’s place and considering what 
in that place would he helpful to himself; and 
it is a discipline of choice expression. Such a 
discipline is of incalculable benefit. It may do 
as much for the mind as discipline in exegesis 
or homiletics. It is much more apt to give 
comprehensiveness of vision to the intellect 
than many another discipline. But it is more 
than a discipline of the mind, it is as well a 
discipline of the heart. It puts the pastor’s 
heart side by side with His heart who carried 
the sorrows and bore the burdens of His fel¬ 
lows. It makes prayer real to the pastor him¬ 
self. His soul is in it and he pours out his 
soul through it. He himself comes very close 
to God. Where he leads the people follow, 
and he does lead them, himself at their head, 
until they talk with God face to face. 

While, however, the most careful thought 
about timely prayer is requisite to every occa¬ 
sion of ministerial opportunity, it is particularly 
requisite to funeral services and sacramental 
105 




TTbe Growing pastor 


seasons. Dr. Charles Hodge was summoned 
from Princeton to Philadelphia to attend the 
funeral of his brother Hugh, the distinguished 
physician and well-known Christian leader. 
Upon Dr. Hodge’s return to Princeton he 
entered the class-room and before beginning 
the lesson in Systematic Theology for the day 
said to his class, the tears filling his eyes and 
tenderness choking his voice: 4 ‘My young 
brethren, I have just come home from the 
funeral of my dear brother. A funeral is very 
solemn. It is a great opportunity. When you 
are out in your fields as ministers, make much 
of funeral occasions.” Dr. Hodge’s counsel 
was wise. It is very seldom that a funeral 
does not find some hearts more accessible to a 
pastor than at almost any other time If op¬ 
portunity for words of address to those gath¬ 
ered is granted, a pastor cannot overestimate 
his privilege in speaking these words. The 
pastor who can meet such opportunity wisely 
and well, year in and year out, is sure to grow, 
especially if he prepares particular Scripture 
selections for each occasion, of child or youth, 
father or mother, as the case may be, and then 
says appropriate words according to each special 
gathering. 


106 




Ube pastor’s public praters 


But it is the prayer service at a funeral that 
is the pastor’s largest and best opportunity. 
Let not any pastor think that he can meet 
that opportunity as it should he met hy enter¬ 
ing into it rapidly and unadvisedly. There are 
chords so delicate that only the deft hand may 
touch them, there are bruised reeds that must 
not he broken, there are cups of sorrow so near 
to the overflowing that one inappropriate word 
will make them tremble to their centers. Well 
may the pastor he cautious, and well may he 
seek special divine guidance, and well may he 
weigh every utterance that is to pass his lips, 
as he endeavors to bring the hearts of sorrow 
into union with the great Father. Thus to 
meet fully the wondrous opportunity of a 
funeral occasion, year after year, requires a 
preparation on the part of a pastor that is in 
itself growth. The pastor that can always and 
everywhere through his prayers make a funeral 
a means of spiritual life to others fulfills a large 
mission. 

Then, too, the sacramental seasons call for 
special appropriateness in prayer. How ten¬ 
der the spirit and how uplifting the words 
should be at an infant’s baptism! How the 
prayer should quiet the parents, and make 
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TTbe Growing pastor 


them forget their nervousness as they find 
themselves coming consciously close to Him 
who took little children in His arms and 
blessed them. How reverential and how peni¬ 
tential and how grateful the prayers should be 
at the communion table. In a congregation’s 
life every observance of the Lord’s Supper has 
its own particular significance; no two occa¬ 
sions find the situation of the community the 
same. If the pastor in his prayers at such 
times can make the spiritual presence of Christ 
real, can make the fellowship of Christian 
believers a communion, can make penitence 
true, gratitude deep, consecration complete 
and intercession for the unsaved prevalent, 
what opportunity is larger than his? That 
opportunity comes to him more through public 
prayers than in any other way. He should 
study the opportunity, pray over it in private, 
search his heart in view of it, see the needs of 
every communicant in the light of it and then 
carry to it the words that make the communion 
like the opening of a door into heaven to the 
souls about him. 

The pastor who in public prayer, combining 
brevity with comprehensiveness, accuracy with 
felicity, dignity with tenderness and beauty 
108 




Ube iPastor’s IPubltc praters 


with strength, brings the spirit of man into 
touch with the Spirit of God is the pastor 
whose steps are certainly ascending the upward 
path of growth. 


109 




“He ran his godly race, 

Nor e'er had changed nor wished to change his place. 
But in his duty prompt at every call, 

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all :— 
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 

He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 

Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. 

His ready smile a parent’s warmth exprest; 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest: 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven .” 

—Oliver Goldsmith. 




110 


Bfcxmntaaes in a Continues pastorate 


THE ADVANTAGES TO A PASTOR 
IN A CONTINUED PASTORATE 

O NE of the distinguishing marks of the 
present age is its alertness. Activity is 
everywhere. The conditions of life are 
constantly changing. Flux and reflux are all 
about us. Such being the situation a pastor to 
continue a pastor must see to it that three great 
growths characterize his advance, namely, de¬ 
velopment in self-control, progress in adapta¬ 
tion and sanctification in motives. 

Every continued pastorate is sure to be 
attended with difficulties and even exigencies. 
Seasons of spiritual drought will make arid the 
church; roots of bitterness springing up in the 
congregation will cause trouble and anxiety; 
finances either in congregational support, 
building construction or general beneficence 
will drag heavy wheels; or the pastor’s intel¬ 
lectual resources and nervous energies will 
seem to himself exhausted and he be ready to 
think his work a profound failure. 

Even in a pastorate of two or five years such 
experiences may appear. They never fail to 
111 




Ube Growing pastor 


appear in a pastorate of ten years or longer. 
What is a pastor to do when they come? He 
may flee from them. Men sometimes do. 
When a church is passing through a trying 
period pastors have been known who leave the 
church. They cast their eyes afar, for a 
different, and, as it seems, a more agreeable 
field of labor, a field better adapted to their 
powers, and then they give up trying to con¬ 
quer present environment. Or if they stay 
where they are they stay half-heartedly, mean¬ 
ing to get along as best they can until some¬ 
how the situation of itself becomes easier, as 
when a storm blows itself out, and hoping that 
a way of departure will later open. 

Undoubtedly there are times in the pastorate 
when a pastor would better resign and go away. 
But the man who, called to enter the valley 
of Baca, makes of that valley a very well, the 
rain of God’s heaven also filling the pools; the 
man who under the stress of difficulties 
acquires a new patience, a new self-mastery, a 
new self-effacement, and then leads himself 
and his church out of difficulties into peace, 
power, and prosperity, is the man who is 
stronger at the conclusion of his trial than at 
its beginning. “If thou faint in the day of 
112 




H&Ymntases tn a Continues pastorate 


adversity, thy strength is small” applies as 
much to the minister in his pastorate as to the 
business man in his distress. If the situation 
possibly admits of betterment the pastor should 
do his best to remedy it and not lay down his 
work when “things are going wrong.” Every 
pastor needs to carry to his future labor a sense 
of power, a quiet, not presuming, sense of 
power such as inspirited David when he faced 
Goliath, because David had conquered in his 
previous contests with the lion and the bear. 

Apart from spirituality there are in the pas¬ 
torate no requirements more essential to the 
holding of men’s respect and the accomplishing 
of God’s work than poise, calmness, judicious¬ 
ness. It is only the pastor of the masterful 
soul that can study all the disturbing elements 
of a congregation in a quiet, clear, unruffled, 
unprejudiced and unselfish way and determine 
through God’s grace to bring order out of 
chaos and victory out of rout. Such a study 
becomes necessary again and again in a con¬ 
tinued pastorate, a study as necessary at year 
eighteen in that pastorate as at year ten or five 
or two. If a man by means of that study 
comes out ahead, the director and the savior of 
the situation, he unconsciously has accumu- 
113 




Ube Growing pastor 


lated strength and power. Such strength and 
power will never lead him to be heady, proud, 
boastful, self-sufficient. He knows too well 
that all his successes have been won through 
the name of the Lord God of Hosts, and so he 
carries himself as gently, and even more gently, 
than when he first rushed into his pastorate. 
But even in his gentleness and self-distrust, 
and in the fear and trembling which character¬ 
ize his continuance in the pastorate, he is a 
surer, stronger man, because all the periods of 
burden, strain and misunderstanding have been 
used to his development, his intellectual, his 
social, his financial and his spiritual develop¬ 
ment. There is something glorious in having 
waited ten, fifteen years to rescue a soul, to 
sweeten a bitterness, to advance a helpful cause 
and then to succeed! 

A continued pastorate calls also for progress 
in adaptation. 

It is very, very seldom that exactly the same 
methods applicable in one pastorate are equally 
applicable in another pastorate, even of the 
same individual. Communities differ essen¬ 
tially. The congregation composed of farmers 
is not the same as that composed of merchants 
and educators. Every change of pastorate 
114 




H&vantages in a Continued pastorate 


forces upon a pastor the fact that the methods 
employed with one set of people are not the 
methods with which he can expect success with 
another set of people. One congregation is 
open to the presence of an outside evangelist, 
another congregation responds much more 
readily to the heart appeals of its own minister. 

Just as communities and congregations differ 
from other communities and congregations, so 
the same community and the same congrega¬ 
tion will differ from themselves in the course 
of a continued pastorate. Especially is this 
the case in, or near, large cities; it is also the 
case, to some degree at least, in every hamlet 
influenced by the newspaper, the school and 
electricity. In a lengthened pastorate scarcely 
a method at first used successfully continues to 
prove successful. The great general principles 
underlying method abide, but the application 
of those principles must change. Sunday- 
school work, missionary organizations, young 
people’s societies, the ordering of the services 
of public worship, the management of the 
mid - week prayer-gatherings, the church 
finances, the benevolent causes, the appeals 
from new fields of need, the altering conditions 
of community life, the inroads of heretical 
115 




TLhc (Browing pastor 


teachings, the whirls of novel amusements and 
the crazes of sudden fascinations, each and all, 
furnish problems hitherto unconsidered, prob¬ 
lems that must be solved in their present 
phases if the pastorate is to have abiding 
leadership. 

In a continued pastorate it becomes evident 
to every eye that the pastor’s work is an in¬ 
complete work. Things have had opportunity 
to wear out. People who were leaders have 
had time to die, or grow old, or move away. 
The whole spirit of a community has had ample 
space in which to change. A new element 
may have moved in that does not remember 
Joseph and wishes life to put on a different 
coloring from that it wore fifteen years ago. 
Men and women who worshiped in the congre¬ 
gation two decades since return and looking 
about for a Sunday or two say: “How changed 
the church is! ” Yes it is changed. The age 
is active, new ideas are in the air, new means 
of pleasure, new styles of business, new stand¬ 
ards of success, and every congregation sooner 
or later is affected by the activity of the age. 
The longer the period of the pastorate, the 
larger the change in the congregation. So it 
comes about that the continued pastorate, if it 
116 




Hfcwantaaes in a Conttnuefc pastorate 


is still to abide in power, must progress in 
adaptation. Such adaptation usually means a 
new use of old resources. The limitations in 
the amount and value of available apparatus 
thus become severe. The tools remain virtu¬ 
ally the same; they cannot be changed or in¬ 
creased. Here then comes the test, the test of 
versatility. Ability must be developed to 
make old tools do new work and to make old 
resources supply present emergencies. “Hie 
labor , hoc opus est .” It is under this test 
that many a pastor breaks down. 4 4 1 have piped 
and ye have not danced. I have lamented and 
ye have not mourned. What more could I do 
that I have not done?” he cries. It is a 
mournful cry, a cry born of interest in souls 
and of devotion to them in Christ’s name. 
“Surely, another pastor will succeed where I 
fail. He has elements of power that I lack. 
Let him come, he will brighten up the situation, 
and these people will be helped. Does not 
Scripture say, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 
Does not history teach that again and again a 
minister labors for years with smallest increase 
to membership but his successor welcomes 
multitudes who flock into membership as doves 
to their windows?” 


117 




XTbe Growing pastor 


So thinking and so talking the long time 
pastor is tempted to feel that he should give 
way to a successor. But if, resolutely facing 
the situation and carefully studying it, he bends 
again to adaptation; if he once more does the 
best he can, consulting with such helpers as he 
can find, using every instrument that is at all 
available, and keeping at his work incessantly, 
self-sacrificingly and cheerily, then there is 
quite sure to come to him an adaptation that 
saves him from unwieldiness and gives him grow¬ 
ing effectiveness. His spirit remains teachable. 
Saved from the danger of thinking it once 
and forever learned all truth, it turns eagerly 
to the literature and movements that in this 
present age aim to bless the world. It must 
so turn else he will be unable to continue doing 
his work, for in the abiding pastorate eternal 
vigilance, the vigilance of the open eye, the 
open mind, the open heart and the open soul is 
the price of continuance. 

A continued pastorate has also this advan¬ 
tage, that it makes the sanctification of a 
pastor’s motives a clear necessity. 

All ministers need to study the motives that 
actuate them. “Why am I trying to do this 
work? What part has Christ and what part 
118 




Bfcvantaaes in a Continues pastorate 


myself in my ambitions concerning it and my 
judgment of its success? Is my heaviness of 
heart due to my sorrow that Christ is not 
glorified or due to the thought that people will 
feel I am not succeeding?” 

Such questions, applicable to every pastor, 
are especially applicable to the pastor whose 
term of service is extending on into the years. 
The eclat of his beginning has ceased. The 
longer his pastorate continues the more quietly 
it seems to the outside world to move. The 
new pastor is heralded, his methods lauded and 
his achievements sung. “Come and hear 
him” is often said. But there is nothing novel 
about the old pastor. He is the same man 
who has led the prayer meeting and preached 
the sermon through many a winter and 
summer. He is exposed to the temptation to 
think his work very monotonous, and to say: 
“I have lost my first burning love for these 
souls. If I could but address new souls and 
face hearts not calloused to my appeals, how 
earnest I would be! Then I would be as 
energetic and as unsparing of myself as ever— 
because I should be more hopeful.” 

Such talk is not foolish talk by any means. 
Many a man through change of pastorate has 
119 




Uhc Growing pastor 


come to a new opportunity. Christ failing in 
one place went elsewhere. So did Paul, and so 
thousands of eminently successful Christian 
workers have done in all ages and lands. 

But the pastor who remains in his pastorate 
must put down this temptation to think he 
could be a more earnest man in another place 
than in his present place. His whole possible 
earnestness must express itself where he is. 
If he is God’s man and not his own, if he is in 
the ministry to do any kind of work God 
assigns him, then he must put heart and soul 
and mind into what is at hand and leave 
results entirely with God. His very situation 
ought to force such an one very, very often to 
his knees, ought to lodge deep within him the 
purpose: “I will study the Scriptures more 
diligently than other pastors for unless I 
constantly discover fresh truths in them, my 
repetitions will drone the people into somno¬ 
lence. In every possible way, of scholarship 
and effectiveness, I will be a growing man, a 
man to command their confidence and even 
win their love. A stranger might be heard by 
them simply because of curiosity, but me they 
will continue to hear only as I am a worthy 
scholar, a worthy teacher and a worthy man.” 

120 




Htwantages in a Continues pastorate 


Thus it comes that the long-time pastor has 
special reason for examining and for rectifying 
his motives. He cannot sustain enthusiasm 
for souls and enthusiasm for intellectual force 
apart from inspiriting motives that have 
wearing power. In a continued pastorate all 
motives wear out excepting holy motives. 
The community comes to know a pastor’s 
motives. They recognize them unerringly. 
The longer he dwells with a community the 
clearer becomes its vision of his motives; and 
unless those motives are pure, unselfish, and 
loving, the long time pastor might as well 
preach to the winds as preach to the people 
about him. Human praise must not be his 
standard; he must rise above it. Human 
condemnation must not be his standard; he 
must rise above it too. His standard must be 
God’s judgment and God’s judgment only, as 
that judgment is pronounced upon his heart 
and work. It will never do for a long-time 
pastor to be other than a good man. Lazi¬ 
ness, slackness in finances, irritability, become 
as evident as the day. A continued pastorate 
drives deeper and deeper into the pastor’s soul 
the conviction that he must be right with God 
to accomplish right with man. 

121 




“I have heard many speak, hut this one man — 

So anxious not to go to Heaven alone — 

This one man I remember, and his look, 

Till twilight overshadowed him. He ceased, 

And out in darkness with the fisher-folk 
We passed and stumbled over mounds of moss, 

And heard, but did not see the passing beck. 

Ah, graceless heart, would that it could regain 
From the dim storehouse of sensations past 
The impress full of tender awe, that night, 

Which fell on me! It was as if the Christ 
Had been drawn down from Heaven to track us home, 
And any of the footsteps following us 
Might have been His.” 

—Jean Ingelow. 


122 


Blessings to ©tbers 


THE BLESSINGS TO OTHERS IN 
A CONTINUED PASTORATE 

N O WORDS are adequate to express the 
blessings which come to our world 
through a growing and continued pas¬ 
torate. There is a blessing first of all to the 
immediate congregation. 

A growing and continued pastorate enables 
the congregation to have confidence in the 
pastor as their spiritual leader. Confidence is 
a plant of slow growth. It is different from 
respect for a man’s office, different from 
sympathy with the man’s work, different from 
affection for the man himself. Respect for the 
pastor’s office, sympathy for his work, and 
affection for the pastor himself may be secured 
in a very short time. 

But confidence in him, in his purposes and 
in his ability, can come [only when long time 
has passed in which the nature of the man 
has been proved. After the people have 
watched him in many trying circumstances 
and have seen him carry himself through 
them without loss of poise, sweetness or gener- 
123 




Ghe Growing pastor 


osity, then they feel they have reason for 
trusting him; and when a new circumstance 
of difficulty arises, they do not relax faith in 
him, even though misunderstandings are in the 
air and others are predicting failure, hut they 
withhold judgment and give him the benefit 
of their confidence. 

Then too they have seen the affairs of the 
congregation under his guidance so often 
emerge from distress into calm, that they have 
at least a half expectancy, if not a full hope, 
that somehow in due time he will lead them 
out of their present difficulty successfully. 
They stand ready to listen to his suggestions 
and plans. They also stand ready to back 
him up when the hour of action is reached and 
to help him in his efforts. He becomes to 
them very much what the captain of a ship is 
to his sailors. And in the storm their one 
question is, “What says our captain?” and 
when they know his saying they accept it as a 
wise and safe judgment. All this is a great 
advantage to a congregation; it saves it 
from much irritation, anxiety and fear, and 
saves it too from much hasty, ill-advised and 
injurious action. Scarcely anything in the 
history of a congregation is more beautiful 
124 




Blessings to ©tbers 


than the way in which a patient, loving pastor, 
trusted by his people, securely leads them 
through wildernesses into promised lands. In 
such a case both congregation and pastor are 
wise in believing the words of S. Weir Mitchell: 
“Children and men have moral measles 
sometimes. Only let them alone, and they 
will get well of themselves. There is a wise 
herb in the garden, and it is called Thyme.” 

How helpful, too, to a congregation is the 
continued acquaintance the long time pastor 
has with their individual and family life. 
Every home has its peculiar sorrow, its 
distinctive history, its special need. No 
stranger can have any idea of its hidden griefs, 
its forebodings, its burdens and its temptations. 
It often takes ten years and more to get so 
deep into family history that a pastor can under¬ 
stand what is absolutely unintelligible to the 
ordinary observer, though that observer lives 
next door to the family. He learns to be more 
charitable than a newcomer could be; he 
knows why it is that certain matters harshly 
condemned by the world at large, have an 
explanation that makes him gentle in judgment 
and even makes him pitiful. He grows to love 
people because he sees their need of love, and 
125 




ftbe Growing IPastor 


he feels that only love can ever soften some of 
their asperities and mollify their grievances 
and fill the desolatenesses of their hearts. It 
is thus he can enter into their joys, and into 
their sorrows, and into their perplexities with 
a sympathy and affection which are a blessing 
to the people themselves. His ministrations, 
private and public, are adapted to their 
conditions, and they know it. He becomes a 
very part of the people. He, as God’s repre¬ 
sentative and as the church’s minister, is linked 
into their lives, and without their realizing 
the fact, this linking into their lives serves to 
link them to God and to God’s church; they 
have associations with God’s church, in a 
hundred ways, that act as an anchorage to 
hold them to the recognition and respect of 
God. In the hour of burden or sorrow they 
are sure that this man who has helped them 
at other times will be glad to help them now, 
not in a perfunctory way, but as their friend, 
their brother, their father. 

There is much, very much, to be said of the 
blessing a new pastor brings into a congre¬ 
gation. How wonderful it is that so soon he 
is accepted freely and that so soon his ministra¬ 
tions are a means of inspiration. The hearts 
126 




Blessings to ©tbers 


of a congregation open to him and from the 
outset accord him a generous welcome; and 
perhaps immediately he becomes to them a 
strength, a wisdom, and a comfort that are 
thoroughly appreciated. And still is it not 
true, that the long-time friend is the friend 
whose presence imparts the sweetest and most 
restful satisfaction, and is it not also true that 
it is to the old-time friend that the heart 
instinctively turns when calamity is sudden 
and grievous? The old-time pastor who has 
known the every joy and every grief of a home 
for many years asks no unnecessary question 
and speaks no unnecessary rebuke. The sore 
spot is not made the more sore by his touch 
upon it, nor is the weary heart made the more 
weary by his injunction to it. It is often the 
new pastor whose fresh methods lead the soul 
to the Saviour; it is often, too, the old pastor 
whose patience, love and sympathy are at last 
the means God uses of bringing the soul into 
sweet and complete acquiescence with that 
Saviour. 

There is a blessing also to the community, in 
a growing and continued pastorate. This 
advantage is not small. It counts large for the 
welfare of the kingdom. A pastor who lives 
127 




XTbe Growing pastor 


long in a town or city where hundreds and 
perhaps thousands observe him, preaches by 
his very life and the sermon enters men’s 
hearts to stay there. They learn to believe 
in him, and such belief steadies them and is 
salt to the entire neighborhood. It disarms 
criticism of the church. In spite of their 
supposed antagonism to the church, people 
accredit this man and accredit his cause. In 
their heart of hearts they acknowledge his 
faithfulness, integrity and benevolence, and 
they know that what he is, he is by the faith 
of the Son of God. A pastor staying for years 
in his place as William Adams did in New 
York City, as John Hall did there, as many a 
man has done in a less conspicuous residence, 
has become a pillar of truth to the community. 
The going away of such a man is a distinct 
loss to the moral and religious well-being of 
the community. There have been pastors in 
Chicago who drew the respect of the entire 
city to their unselfishness, highmindedness and 
outspokenness, so that their names were 
known and an utterance or an opinion originat¬ 
ing with them held attention. The presence 
of such pastors made editors, merchants, 
mechanics and scholars feel safer. The 
128 




3BIesstn0s to ©tbers 


community weighed their words and still more 
weighed their deeds. When such pastors 
ceased residing there, Chicago became the 
poorer and has been the poorer ever since. 

What is true of a great city is even more 
true, at least is more perceptible, in a town or 
village. In such a town or village the long¬ 
time pastor becomes known to every one. 
Wherever he goes, he is understood to be 
God’s man, who wishes advance to every virtue 
and who wishes ending to every vice. The 
children see him, and are reminded of his holy 
purposes. Men and women look out from 
factories or farms as he passes, and their view 
of life ceases to be entirely material. In 
matters of education, of civic advancement 
and of general public welfare he can often do 
what none but a long known, highly respected 
and thoroughly trusted citizen can do. 

Then there is a third blessing in a growing 
and continued pastorate, the blessing to the 
Church at large. 

It steadies other pastors. Pastors are fear¬ 
fully exposed to the tendency to restlessness. 
Their work is a trying one, to heart and brain 
and nerves. It starts with large purposes and 
wide horizons. It soon faces small accom- 
129 




Ube Growing pastor 


plishments and narrow results. The temptation 
to discouragement thus becomes great. Besides, 
often there are financial burdens that rest 
with heavy weight on a pastor; there are 
factions in his present charge that almost 
distract him; and he has so much less 
opportunity for study than he desires and than 
he is sure exists elsewhere. Surely he and his 
family could accomplish so much more under 
different circumstances! There are as many 
reasons as there are individual pastorates why 
a pastor at times feels that he must give up 
his present charge and go elsewhere. The 
result is that pastors move about with much 
rapidity, and a general condition of change¬ 
ableness exists—though any field in which a 
pastor may be is larger than he can possibly fill. 

When, then, fellow pastors see one of their 
brethren continuing constant, especially if 
they are acquainted with his perplexities and 
limitations and so-called reasons for heavy 
heartedness, they are helped to stand faithful 
in their own lots. His plodding industry, 
cheerful intrepidity and sweet patience hearten 
them. They have their bad hours, when it 
seems as though they could not stay another 
day where they are, but they think of their 
130 




Blessings to ©tbers 


brother who keeps at his post and will not give 
up, and his firm bravery quiets and cheers 
them. Many a long-time pastor seeing his 
fellow ministers on the move, has said to 
himself: “This restlessness is unfortunate for 
the church and unfortunate for my brethren. 
I will stay just where I am and will not go 
away, however attractive the invitation; and 
thus I will try to remedy this restlessness.” 

Continued pastorates are a blessing to 
missionaries. 

Especially is this true of missionaries in 
foreign lands. They know whom to think of 
in the old places and pulpits. They know 
who are thinking of them, with an interest not 
late born, but born years ago when the 
missionaries were younger and fresher and 
less worn. They can see the old-time pastor 
in the very church where they were children, 
or where they were married or ordained. It 
seems to them as though as missionaries they 
sustained a more vital connection with the 
home churches because all is so familiar and 
close. They are cheered by this sense of 
solidarity and sympathy. They know where 
to turn for counsel and help. When their 
sorrows come they are sure that the old-time 
131 




ftbe Growing pastor 


pastor will lead the old-time congregation in 
prayer for them as no other than he could do. 

Such continued pastorates are a blessing to 
the denomination as a whole. 

So far as a long pastorate is known in the 
denomination it tends to impart a sense of 
stability to the denomination. It is an offset 
to the charge that ministers are always on the 
move. In the world at large it secures con¬ 
tinuity of life to denominational recognition, 
weight and influence. In the denomination 
itself it makes the denominational body seem 
more compact and permanent. It gives the 
readers of its denominational papers names 
with which they are acquainted, and causes 
those readers to have a fresh allegiance to the 
denomination as they see that such names 
stand for the true, the brave and the useful. 
It allows the denomination’s Boards to have 
pastors whose residence is known, and in the 
hour of emergency those Boards are sure 
where they can appeal for relief. 

And once again a continued pastorate is a 
blessing to the whole Church of Christ. 

The man who long abides in his pastorate, 
particularly if he is in a prominent place, ceases 
to be merely the representative of a denomin- 
182 




Blessings to ©tbers 


ation; he becomes the representative of 
Christendom. Spurgeon of the Tabernacle, 
and Joseph Parker of the City Temple, are 
never thought of by most people who read 
their words, under their denominational name, 
but under the all embracing name of Christian. 
We all feel that such men belong to us as well 
as to the Baptist or Congregational Church; 
and we rejoice, all Christendom rejoices in the 
men who, for a generation of years, can stand 
and who do stand in a pulpit, speaking words 
of heavenly wisdom and living lives of Christ- 
likeness. When Christendom, not denomin- 
ationalism, counts up its jewels, it names such 
men and calls them all her own. And they 
are her own, for they have made most helpful 
contribution to her glory. 

It is true, very true, that much may be said 
in advocacy of the short pastorate. In 1864 a 
number of people believed it impossible to 
re-elect Mr. Lincoln to the presidency. 
Francis Lieber, wise student of political 
history and member of a select committee 
appointed to beseech Mr. Lincoln not to let 
his name be submitted for suffrage, wrote: 
“Individuals wear out quickly in revolutionary 
times, were there no other reason than that 
133 




ZTbe Growing pastor 


familiarity with a name takes from it enthu¬ 
siasm. Even Napoleon would not have been 
able to mount and bridle the steed of revolution 
had he come in at first. The fact is that there 
is no spark of that enthusiasm or inspiriting 
motive force, call it what you may, for Mr. 
Lincoln, without which you cannot move so 
comprehensive an election as that of a presi¬ 
dent. We must have a new man, and we 
cannot have him without Mr. Lincoln’s with¬ 
drawal. Oh! that an angel could descend and 
show him what a beautiful stamp on his name 
in history such a withdrawal would be.” 

Yes, there is charm and power in a new 
name oftentimes. But Professor Lieber was 
wrong concerning the old name of Mr. Lincoln. 
That old name fortunately was presented for 
the suffrage of the people in November, 1864, 
and old though it was and because it was old, 
old in devotion, old in burdens, and old in 
trustworthiness it carried every voting state of 
the Union but three. 

There may be charm and power in the old 
as well as in the new. The meteor dashing 
across the sky with its beautiful path of light 
is one thing; the northern star standing steady 
in its place is another thing. The pastorate 
134 




Blessings to ©tbers 


that startles the world by the almost instan¬ 
taneous conversion of its scores and perhaps 
hundreds challenges our attention to the light 
it creates, and—sometimes challenges it to the 
darkness it leaves. The pastorate that never 
startles, never dazzles, but year after year 
remains steadfast, giving true guidance to all 
eyes, of the child and of the man, of the poor 
and of the rich—whether on land or water, in 
joy or sorrow, such a northern star pastorate 
certainly has its own blessed mission for our 
earth. 

As the words of this book come to their 
close, the heart of the writer leaps forward for 
its final expression of interest in the theme he 
has been presenting. He is fully aware that 
many a pastor regards the work of the present- 
day pastorate as peculiarly difficult. The de¬ 
tails of a pastor’s life are innumerable; the 
burden of raising money for beneficence is 
oppressive; the spirit of worldliness that is 
abroad strikes dismay to his soul; and the 
hearts of many, engrossed in the material and 
temporal, offer no opening to his appeals. 

All this may be true, true at least to a large 
degree. And still this also is true, that only 
185 




Ube (Browing pastor 


the pastor who himself carries burdens can 
sympathize with others who carry burdens; 
and this also is true, that the work waiting to 
be done by the pastor is a work that must be 
done—if Christ is to see of the travail of His 
soul and be satisfied. Fidelity to Christ and 
devotion to men summon every pastor to new 
and larger consecrations. Men must be 
reached, helped, comforted, saved, and we 
must be the ones to reach them. In some 
respects the pastorate never so constrained to 
sweetness of spirit, persistence of purpose, 
mastery of circumstances and unselfish helpful¬ 
ness as to-day. We need to look long at Him 
who, though He existed in the form of God, 
emptied Himself and taking the form of 
man’s servant became obedient even unto 
death. What are our details and embarrass¬ 
ments and refusals compared to His? 

We need, too, to open our souls to their 
widest, that the cleansing winds of the Holy 
Ghost may blow through them and the quick¬ 
ening fires of the Holy Ghost may enkindle 
them. The Holy Ghost who rejoices in the 
opportunity of manifesting His power, waits 
for such an opportunity in us. He will not 
leave us to weakness. He will come to us, and 
136 




JBlesstnas to ©tbers 


in Him and through Him we shall do the work 
of heeding the flocks over which He has made 
us overseers. 

The world cannot prosper without us. 
Every time we leave our work undone, the 
world suffers. Christ Himself is depending 
upon us. He bids us move forward, keeping 
brave, cheerful and plodding. Just so cer¬ 
tainly as we aim to grow, in knowledge of the 
truth, in sympathy with our fellows and in 
effectiveness in labor, and diligently use the 
means of growth, just so certainly will He 
grant us His benediction. Our work does not 
fail, and it never will fail. Every man of us is 
always bringing nearer the day when mankind 
shall become the one flock of the One Shepherd! 

In this high hope and in this glad anticipa¬ 
tion we lift our hearts toward Christ, and we 
say: 

“O Master, let me walk with Thee 
In lowly paths of service free; 

Tell me Thy secret; help me bear 
The strain of toil, the fret of care. 

“Help me the slow of heart to move 
By some clear winning word of love; 

Teach me the wayward feet to stay, 

And guide them in the homeward way. 

137 




ftbe ©rowing iPastor 


“Teach me Thy patience; still with Thee 
In closer, dearer company, 

In work that keeps faith sweet and strong, 
In trust that triumphs over wrong; 

“In hope that sends a shining ray 
Far down the future’s broadening way; 

In peace that only Thou canst give, 

With Thee, 0 Master, let me live.” 


138 






I 






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